


The Ring

by CarrieL



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Endgame-fixer, F/M, Post-Endgame, Seven's bony shoulder, that conniving old bat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5614150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrieL/pseuds/CarrieL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An update and rewrite of a story I first posted a few years ago - an extension of my very first fanfic about a moment right after Endgame, in which Chakotay remembers something important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This was madness.

He stood in front of the replicator staring. This was madness. She would laugh – or no, worse, that look of eloquent concern would steal over her face, the one she reserved for a crewman who had just embarrassed him or herself beyond retrieval and could only fall on the captain’s tender mercy. And she was tender. Under the bravado and iron lady determination, he knew her tender heart. It had comforted him so many times when he was near despair. She would pity him for cherishing this earnest dream all these years, since nearly the first moment she blocked his armed advance onto her bridge with a body half his size. She would try to distract him, offer him a new blend of tea, touch him in some familiar, soothing way as she explained that no, she had never really thought of them having a future together. 

Or worse – he kept thinking of worse worst case scenarios, other things he couldn’t bear – she would say that she had thought of them together, had wanted it at one time, but the harsh years had worn away what they once had like the rush of water down a canyon, or erased it like the flash of a nebula visible across deep space from the view screen, stunning and then gone. That would be harder, he thought: the idea that if he had only chosen the right moment, she could have been his. He must prepare himself for that heartbreak as well. The heartbreak he anticipated took so many forms in his fevered imagination that he felt unequal to the task of preparing for them all. Whatever words she used to devastate him, he must bear up, protect the necessary lamplight of their friendship no matter how it paled beside the ached-for sunlight of her love.

The ring was perfect, he knew that much. The only adornment he had ever seen on her was a combadge. She had never worn Mark’s ring, if there ever was one. On duty, it would be out of uniform, and off duty he could only imagine that it was too painful a reminder of what she’d abandoned when she ordered the destruction of the Caretaker’s array. He had never seen it. He didn’t need to see it. Whatever Mark knew or felt about her, he could never know her or love her as well as the man who had been by her side, round the clock many days, for seven straight years. 

Chakotay had watched what she admired in alien space stations and at bazaars on now-distant worlds. She seldom acquired anything for herself, but on the day when she picked up a brilliant blue stone resembling an Earth sapphire, he had been on the far side of the stand, watching the way she stood open-mouthed in delight at the sparkle of twin alien suns reflected by the gem, letting her face glow with genuine emotion for a change. He remembered everything: slipping behind her toward the display as she moved away, trading a few precious stones of his own for the exotic jewel, then tucking it away for the day when he’d have the right to offer it back to her. He would always remember every detail of the transaction, and all the hope it carried, no matter what she said when he made a fool of himself in a few minutes.

He put out a hand to palm the tiny, precious ornament. Familiar stars were at the portals and rations were a thing of the past. If he were to grant himself one indulgence after all the sacrifices of these seven years, it would be this: a chance at a life with Kathryn. The risk might cost him what he cherished most. Their friendship had been his guidestar, his peace, the place where he sought answers and resolutions even at his angriest, because outside her orbit was only darkness. Those words had come to him as he tried to explain his sudden change of heart to Seven. He couldn’t say them to her, but there they were, the essential truth of his existence.

Seven had been unblinking before the Astrometrics screen that dwarfed them both. 

“I thought you wished to remain within transporter distance of me,” she said, not asking but telling.

“I do. That can mean many things. And I didn’t want to end our relationship out of fear of what the Admiral said to you. We both deserve better than that.” 

As he spoke these words, he caught himself staring down at the toe of his boot, like a little boy caught telling a white lie to the teacher. He stubbed at the threadbare carpet across which Seven paced from console to console a thousand times a day and felt a blush rise on his neck. In some ways, Seven already seemed older than he was, clearer in her thinking but also less compromised by a lifetime of accumulated human frailty. He drew himself up and made himself look at her. Seven tapped a panel absent-mindedly with her left hand, creating a metallic click, half consumed by the fascination of a star system completely alien to her, half listening to him. 

“Why have you changed your mind, then?” 

Chakotay resisted the temptation to start playing with an instrument panel. “I think … I think I’d stopped believing we’d get home in my lifetime. There have been so many failed attempts. It seemed absurd to make any plans assuming that it would really happen this time. Most of me believed that we’d just go along as we had been.”

Seven lifted an eye in his direction but moved her right hand to join her left at the console, turning away even as he struggled to connect and communicate. 

“And now things are different?” 

He nodded, a little embarrassed to discover that the emotion he felt was a flood of relief.

“Yes. Now that it’s real, I think we should both consider what it will mean. You’ll have so many opportunities. I would be in the way.” He studied her elegant profile, the sweep of her hair against her perfect skull. It reminded him of the way Kathryn used to wear her hair, the stern upsweep eternally maintained until gradually, as time and space battered them all, her hair came down and something both loosened and hardened in her. A sudden realization made him smile to himself – he couldn’t even admire Seven without thinking of Kathryn. What was he doing here? 

But everything was coming in sevens now. Seven years, the seven days a week he’d been a fool, and Seven herself now lifting both hands from the console and turning to face him with one eyebrow arched in an expression she must have copied from Tuvok, probably deliberately. 

“You are not doing this because of my opportunities. Why are you doing it?” Her voice was unemotional, curious, the essence of her droid self. He had to laugh.

“You’re right, Seven. I never could put anything past you.” 

He paused, trying to find words to explain the truth of his feelings for Kathryn without betraying the awkward reality that he was dumping Seven without any certainty that Kathryn would reciprocate. It was then that the orbital metaphor came to him – _outside her orbit was only darkness_ – perfect and useless in the situation. Breaking up with a woman by explaining to her how helplessly he was in love with another was not prudent, even with a Borg. He sighed.

“You have feelings for someone else,” she said, arms still at her sides, relaxed, no sign of assimilation tubules. At least she was taking it well. He caught himself staring past her at the orbital patterns mapped on the screen, planets and moons in their exquisitely timed dance. He thought of things like fate and destiny that hadn’t crossed his mind in years, then dragged his eyes back to her flawless, dispassionate face, where nothing moved, nothing danced. She watched him clinically, reading his discomfort, the body language she had never learned and he had never learned to hide.

“Yes,” he nodded, wrapping one hand around his own fist. “I’m sorry, Seven. While we were out there, it didn’t matter. It could never matter. And now – ”

“Now you wish to form a pair bond with Captain Janeway. It is perfectly logical. You will no longer be restrained by the chain of command.” Seven nodded briskly and turned back to her console, as if the matter were settled.

Had she really understood all that, all this time, even as she was innocently asking him on dates and planting shocking – _but not unwelcome, no, never unwelcome, old man_ – kisses on him? Did she believe that he meant so little to Kathryn, or was it a calculated betrayal? And wasn't he guilty of just such a betrayal? He staggered a little. 

“You make it sound so calculating, Seven,” he began, mortified, moving close to her tall shoulder. He was struck again by her stature, how she dwarfed Kathryn physically yet lacked anything like the same presence. “I never meant you to be some kind of replacement. I was … flattered by your interest, and I was sincere in everything I said to you. I just – I made a mistake. I got lost somewhere out there.”

She was initiating some new calculation of the ship’s trajectory past the outer planets of Earth’s solar system, concentrating on her own flying fingers. When the last command was entered, she lifted her head toward him. 

“What you said to me is irrelevant. And you are correct, I will have many opportunities in the alpha quadrant. This is best for both of us. I wish you every happiness with the captain.” She might lack Kathryn’s command presence, but her dismissals were definitive.

“Thank you, Seven,” he said weakly. He reached out a hand, intending to give her a friendly embrace, but she stood so stiffly at attention that he wound up patting her bony lycra shoulder like some sort of awkward professor on the last day of class. She refocused her attention on the readings beginning to fill the screen. Chakotay fled.

Now, off duty, aware of Kathryn waiting in her quarters with her latest attempt at an edible meal for the two of them, he continued to stare at the ring in his hand and cursed himself in his native tongue. Klingon would have been more satisfying. He wanted to call himself a coward twelve different ways and attack this obstacle with a batleth rather than the meager tools at hand, his own shaking hands and voice. But she was waiting. He had not shrunk from resigning his Starfleet commission and captaining a ship of rebels to almost certain death against a brutal, ruthless enemy. He would not be defeated by the prospect of walking ten meters up the corridor to be rejected by the woman he loved. He’d prefer Cardassians any day, but this was the battle at hand.


	2. We've never so much as kissed!

The ring safely tucked into a waist pocket on his favorite vest, the one she’d touched so long ago, he rang her chime.

“The very last bottle of Antarian cider!” he exclaimed when she came to the door, laying the glowing golden bottle in her hands. A prop was necessary to begin this evening. He offered it with enthusiasm. She looked up at him in surprise.

“The very last one? Really?” She had that fond, quizzical look on her face that he liked to think she reserved for the little surprises he planned for her. She was wearing her blue dress and stood barefoot and tiny in the door’s aperture, an Alpha quadrant welcoming angel, something he’d dreamed up. She must be able to hear his heart pounding in his chest as he tried to come up with calm, casual words to answer her.

“It must have been fate,” he smiled. She hadn’t moved to let him walk in. Something unreadable – a cloud, a reflection – moved across her face as she took in the leatherwork on his vest. He suddenly recalled that the last time she had seen it was when he fell under Teero’s mind control and mutinied. He’d been wearing it when he ordered Tuvok to kill her. Words were on his lips to apologize for his choice of clothing when she spoke. 

“Fate indeed. I have a few choice words for fate, if the opportunity ever comes,” she said and stepped back into the dimmer light to let him pass. Evidently she was thinking of missed opportunities herself tonight. There were abundant flowers on the table and around the room, but none of the low, flickering candles she had put out for their dinners for so many years. She gestured at the bouquets. 

“Some of the crew thought I needed flowers to welcome me home. Aren’t they lovely?”

Some of the crew? He bitterly chided himself. They should have been from him. He should have sent her roses, walked in with his arms full of them, and instead he’d showed up in his mutiny suit. He was getting this wrong and he hadn’t started. He’d only get one chance before the army of admirers met her at Starfleet headquarters and he was relegated to an entry on her holiday gift list.

“I was thinking trees,” he said without thinking, turning around to admire the flowers. 

“Trees?” she echoed, setting the bottle on the table. “What do you mean, trees?”

“I want to plant trees for us all,” he told her, caressing the petals of the table arrangement with one hand. “To commemorate the years we spent together, the friends we made, the friends we lost. Something with roots in dirt that will grow and last.”

Her face grew softer as she looked from the flowers to him. “That’s a beautiful idea. And I know just the spot to plant them. Wait ‘til you see it.” She hesitated for a moment, as if caught up in something she was imagining, then shook off the reverie and turned toward her replicator. “Have a seat. I have high hopes for this one!”

“I haven’t heard any fire alarms yet,” he teased. 

She shook her head as she set a dish of something hot but unburned between them and sat down opposite him. “If my own reputation didn’t precede me so convincingly, you’d pay for that kind of remark.” 

“It smells wonderful,” he assured her, reaching for the cider and the corkscrew.

She waved a serving spoon at him accusingly. “It should, it’s your recipe.” 

He pulled expertly at the cork until it popped with a satisfying sigh. She raised the first toast. “To all our working dinners,” she offered. “I’m going to miss these. The way you’ve been cancelling on me lately, I wasn’t sure I’d get even this last one.”

“About that – ” he sipped quickly, set down his glass and leaned in. “I need to apologize. I haven’t been – ”

“No no,” she waved away his explanation. “You don’t have to make excuses to me. This was never a mandatory activity, just a pleasant way to pass the time. But I will miss it. I hope we can still have dinner together once in a while back on Earth, or wherever life takes us.”

He sat back, chastened. She was already thinking of their parting. This might be just as awkward and awful as he’d feared. “I hope to have dinner with you very often,” he answered.

“That would be nice,” she said without looking at him and quickly raised her glass for a long drink of cider. She positioned the glass next to her plate and took a deep breath, the way she did just before launching into something required but not necessarily pleasant.

He felt his shoulders tilt toward her as the warm rush of concern moved out from his heart in her direction, as it always did, irresistibly. “What is it, Kathryn?” 

“What’s what?” she looked up with exaggerated innocence. “Oh, you. Don’t worry. I suppose I’m just getting nostalgic in advance. In a few days everything will be so different. I don’t know if I’m quite prepared.” She picked up her napkin and tried to put it in her lap but somehow wound up fussing with the cloth until she gave up and tossed it onto her legs in a wad. He reached one hand over and took hers as it hovered anxiously above the table. 

“You seem nervous.” 

He tried to catch her eyes, but she was observing the flowers very deliberately. His mind raced ahead, looking for signs of how she might react. She couldn’t possibly know about the ring, but did she somehow guess that he wanted to talk about the two of them? Was she trying to deter him, preserve their hard-won détente? 

“Chrysanthemums,” she said suddenly, then laughed in a high-pitched tone. “The flower of death. Whoever did the flower arranging must have neglected the language of flowers in school.” She plucked a puffy red chrysanthemum from the arrangement and twirled its stem between her fingers. Her other hand - far too cold for the temperature of the room – held his tightly. 

“What would you like your flowers to talk about?” he asked. Her look grew thoughtful as she regarded the mum.

“Maybe new beginnings,” she answered, still not looking at him. “That would be daffodils. Or irises for friendship, and hope.”

He smiled down at her chilly little hand. It was unimaginable that she would ever stop surprising him, stop showing him new sides to an endlessly complex personality. 

“How does a starship captain happen to learn the language of flowers?” 

“You forget that I was a science officer. Extra credit for a long forgotten botany class, but that part I remembered.” She gave him her own smile, bolstered by the reference to something she knew, an answer she could give with confidence. The smile strengthened him.

“Kathryn, there’s something I need to ask you,” he said, holding her hand firmly when she tried gently to draw it back. Her expression went instantly from confident to terrified – or as much terror as Kathryn Janeway would ever willingly show anybody. It almost stopped him cold, but he’d sworn to himself to see this through. She took in a long breath and lifted her chin with as much stiff-backed courage as if there had been Kazon at the door. Her upper lip trembled, but so slightly that only he – who knew her face all too well – would have noticed.

“Of course. Anything.” Her eyes met his, full of a fear he didn’t dare define but facing it full on. Spirits, she was brave. He wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but looking at her now, he loved her even more. He took a deep breath himself. Showtime.

“We’ve been through just about everything together, you and I. You’ve been my best friend aboard this ship. Probably the best friend I’ve ever had.” He wanted to take her other hand, too, but through the glass table he could see her gripping the stem of the mum in her lap like a hidden phaser.

“And you mine,” she answered evenly, in a voice almost as emotionless as Seven’s. Her eyes held his as if her life depended on standing her ground and meeting whatever he threw at her. This was Janeway in full battle armor, magnificent and ferociously intimidating. Could she have guessed? Was she warning him off? The chill of her hand was creeping up his arm, stealing around his heart. His cowardice reared his head and suggested a traitorous way out – he could ask what she’d heard about the Maquis, how Starfleet would treat them. It was the other thing that had been occupying him day and night. She would accept it as the urgent question it was. He would be off the hook. _Coward!_ He gritted his teeth and plunged onward.

“You said once that you couldn’t imagine a day without me, and I’ve always felt the same.” He paused and watched for some reaction. Her face was frozen, only her eyes darting nervously between his eyes and the spot on the table where his hand pinned hers. “And now I find that I can’t imagine leaving this ship and being without you.”

Her eyebrows twitched and came together in an expression of pained confusion. “I – what are you asking me, Chakotay?” she whispered. He let go of her hand and her eyes grew wider, almost panicked. He dipped a finger into his pocket and pulled out the ring below the level of the table, blocked from her view by the enormous bouquet.

“This is old-fashioned,” he said, “but my people are old-fashioned.” These were the words he’d rehearsed. He’d left nothing to chance, so that freezing up would not be an option. He rose from his seat, knelt beside her and held up the ring, its brilliant blue stone catching the light. She gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. Whatever her reaction now, there was nothing to do but continue.

“Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway,” he said without any pause, so that she’d have to hear him out, “I love you and nothing is going to change that. Now that we are finally free of command, will you do me the honor of being my wife?” There it was, every word of it. Now she could do with him what she would, and he could go to his grave knowing that he’d tried. He shut his eyes and let out the breath he’d been holding. Her next words couldn’t have surprised him more.

“ _What about Seven?_ ” She let her hands fall away from her face and held them in front of her, palms up, in a gesture of supplication and total bafflement.

“What about her?” he asked in almost equal confusion. How could she possibly know about Seven? Seven herself would never have – and then realization dawned. His face darkened. “What did the Admiral tell you?”

Kathryn dropped her hands into her lap and her shoulders slumped. The warrior was gone, replaced by a woman in badly hidden pain. Chakotay let the hand brandishing the ring rest on one of her knees. This was not among the climaxes – positive or negative – for which he’d prepared himself.

“She said that you’d – ” Kathryn breathed deeply, grasped the edge of the table and forced out the words, “that Seven would – ” 

“That she’d hurt me?” he prompted. 

She looked at him without moving any other part of her body, a study in tension. “That you’d marry her,” she answered in a whisper. His whole face opened in an expression of astonishment. 

“That I’d what?” he burst out. He nearly dropped the ring, casting his eyes around the room as if looking for an explanation for her extraordinary statement. His position down on one knee was getting uncomfortable, so he reached for his chair and pulled it under him where he was, facing her. “That – that conniving old bat!” he spat out.

“Chakotay,” Kathryn said and put a firm hand on his arm, regaining her composure a little. “Whatever she may have said, she just sacrificed herself for us.”

He took a few more deep breaths and tried to corral his thoughts enough to speak. In a moment, he took up the challenge again. “She told Seven that she’d hurt me. Seven tried to break up with me over it.”

That look again on Kathryn’s face: Kazon at the door. Even more disturbing was how quickly she mastered it and nodded. “Well, of course she was manipulating us all into doing what she wanted. You shouldn’t let it worry you.” Kathryn wagged a teasing finger, not cheerful but eternally capable of bravado. “Temporal prime directive – I warned you what a nuisance it is!”

This would never work. Now she was carefully not looking at the ring and had turned her shoulders away from him, back toward the table, as if his proposal was just an embarrassing lapse in propriety brought on by the Admiral’s machinations. He had to make her understand that he was serious. He had to make her answer seriously. 

“Kathryn.” He lowered his voice, aiming for gravitas. “You haven’t answered my question.”

She examined her enchiladas, opened and closed her mouth, and attacked her napkin again, this time with both hands.

“You – ” she began, but her voice was shaking. She swallowed and started again, more robust this time, eyes on her food. “You were thinking of what the Admiral said. You have to forget about that. There’s no reason you or Seven will get hurt now. Your lives will be much safer.” It was a perfect speech, delivered with complete composure, except that she wouldn’t look at him and was on the verge of tearing her heavy cloth napkin down the middle.

“Kathryn,” he scolded her. He tucked the ring back into his vest, forcibly rescued the napkin and deposited it on the other side of the table so that he could fold her hands into his. “Let me be perfectly clear, and then if you really want to tell me no, you’re going to have to say it in plain words. I love you. I do not love Seven. I ended it today and neither of us was the least bit upset.”

Kathryn’s hands twitched in his, but she didn’t pull away. “Just like that? Is she okay?” she said in that businesslike tone she relied on for any discussion about the crew.

He let his head sag. It was a physiological reflex, her selfless concern for her crew – even in the middle of a marriage proposal that was going badly off the rails. She’d have the same reactions in her sleep. 

“She’s fine. It would be closer to the truth to say that we both ended it. Nobody’s heart is broken. Seven doesn’t have the first clue what love is and my heart – well, it was never available to give away. And she knew it. ‘It is perfectly logical. You wish to form a pair bond with Captain Janeway,’ she said to me, just like that, like we were talking about away mission teams.” Chakotay laughed. The beginnings of a smile formed at the corners of Janeway’s mouth.

“Logical. Is that what this is? The practical thing to do?” Her question sounded like a young girl’s, the first time he’d ever heard such vulnerability from her. She looked even tinier than usual, out of uniform, slumping against her chair inside the long blue dress. She’d brushed out whatever she used to gloss her hair for duty and washed her face, he noticed. The last time he’d seen her looking so young and free had been … on New Earth.

His paralyzed heart began to beat again. The smile was sneaking back into his voice as he tried to keep it off his face. Her anguish at the idea of him and Seven, regrettable as it was, told him most of what he needed to know. He shook his head. 

“Whatever form of hereditary insanity got me to come over here with a ring tonight, it had nothing to do with logic or practicality. You should have seen me in my quarters half an hour ago. It was like marching out to fight the Cardassians again!”

“Flattering,” she smirked. 

He was beginning to feel warmth in her hands, to match the rising pink in her cheeks, like she was coming back to life from stasis. He held up the ring again. “Now if you wouldn’t mind addressing the command decision at hand?” 

“Marry you?” She fixed her eyes on the ring now, as if it had just appeared out of mid-air. Her left hand crept out to touch the beautiful stone. The look on her face was so rapt that he wondered if she could possibly remember that day in the market. He’d always assumed that it was just a passing fancy to her, even though it was marked in his memory as a day of tremendous significance, the instant he’d decided that one day, if fate ever gave him the chance to offer it, he’d have a ring ready for her. Then she shook her head with a shocked expression. 

“How can we get married? We’ve never so much as kissed!”

Now he smiled for real. He knew that look. She wasn’t disputing the idea, she was negotiating terms. She was his. 

“You’re welcome to try out anything you see here.” He gestured expansively at himself. “But Kathryn, I’ve been waiting seven years for a chance to close this deal. I’m not going to give all those dashing Starfleet officers back on Earth a moment’s chance at you if I can help it.”

At that, she smiled too. 

“If that’s your goal, Commander,” she lifted her chin, this time with a sweet expression he had only ever seen her offer to him, and pressed her lips together with a newly radiant look, “you’d better put that ring on me now.” 

And she extended her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the original, cotton-candy sweet story. It gets darker after this.


	3. To love a woman unreservedly

After his unexpected proposal and Janeway's even more unexpected acceptance, Chakotay spent the night in her quarters, remembering what it felt like to love a woman unreservedly – and feeling for the first time the existential terror of holding a lover whose loss would in all likelihood destroy him. 

At first, they were frantic with each other, leaping across the small distance that separated them the moment the ring was on her finger.

“Bed?” Chakotay gasped through the kiss that consumed them. Janeway was on his lap, skirt already above her knees as his hands sought skin.

“Table!” she urged as she yanked his vest open. In the end it was the floor that received them, still half-dressed, shoving aside garments to achieve the coupling neither could wait for, their perfectly edible supper and the last bottle of Antarian cider entirely forgotten. He could not remember wanting a woman more. As she writhed at his fingers on her breasts and between her legs and pulled him into her with the strength of her legs – _oh spirits, yes_ \- he could not fathom how he had waited this long. 

When they finally fell back limp and panting, he turned to see her face again. It was rosy and smiling, her eyes a brighter blue than he had ever seen. When they caught his, she began to laugh. He didn’t understand, but he had never been able to resist her laugh.

“What?” he demanded in the middle of his own chuckle. “That’s not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.”

She shook her head and tugged down her dress a little. “I don’t know. It’s – I don’t know how to be this way with you. Maybe I’m just happy.”

“I’ll make you happier than that,” he promised, and reached for her again.

Late that night when they had made it to the bed and she finally lay in his arms, head cushioned on his shoulder, warm and satisfied, he felt her tremble. 

“Kathryn?” he murmured, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders against the cool, recirculated air, still memorizing every movement of her skin against his, in case the whole evening was some Q trick about to evaporate. He smiled against her hair. “Was the inspection up to your standards?”

Her low laugh resonated against him. “Exemplary in every way,” she murmured, then shook her head, hair spilling soft across his chest. “I’m sorry. You won’t believe this,” her voice came to him muffled and embarrassed, “but I’m afraid.”

He shifted to get a view of her face, but she was pressing it against him. “Afraid of what? Kathryn, I would give my life before I let anything hurt you.”

“That!” she cried, her fist hardening against his chest. She pressed up to face him. “That’s what I’m afraid of! That being with me will put you in greater danger, or that –” she paused, and he could feel her heart pounding against his side. He kept quiet to let her finish. “That this won’t really work, you and me. Losing you has always been the one thing that scared me more than all the villains of the Delta quadrant combined.” 

Her face grew calmer but she stared into his eyes with devastating intensity. There were no tears, not from Kathryn Janeway, but he saw her raw honesty and how much it cost her to confess this weakness: the magnitude of her love. Chakotay’s heart swelled and broke and healed all at once to read in her face, so close to his, how much he meant to her, how much Kathryn the great had put herself in his flawed hands. He had dared to hope, but had never really believed, that this moment would come. He brushed his lips across hers and pulled his head back to study her with unshuttered adoration. 

“You’re not getting rid of me,” he told her. “Not now.”

She ran a finger along his thick bicep with a slow smile of admiration and delight. “I said to you earlier that I don’t know how to be this way with you. It will take me a while to get comfortable with it. I feel like we’re … oh, I don’t know ….” She paused, but her fingers kept tracing across his skin, learning its texture. They came up his neck, drawing an aroused shiver from him, and moved across his tattoo.

“Sneaking around?” he suggested, settling his hand on her hip with a novel and invigorating sense of possession. His Kathryn. His woman. His wife. How proud he would be to speak that word, to walk through crowded rooms or down an ordinary street with his arm around her, to work beside her free to grasp her hand, stroke her cheek. A bright future unfolded in precincts of his mind that had been powered down for too long.

“Maybe,” she conceded. She lifted her left hand from his skin to examine the stone again. “Chakotay, how did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

Kathryn’s face grew puzzled. “The stone. It’s just like the one my father gave my mother. I thought someone must have told you about it.”

Chakotay leaned in to kiss it and told her the story about how he’d bought it, this treasured tale that had the added merit of being entirely true, and entirely for her. He had never told another soul. Her face transformed as she listened, and Chakotay wrote her every expression of pleasure on his heart, to return to and enjoy in the happy days to come.

“I can’t wear it on duty, you know,” she said. “It doesn’t mean I’m trying to hide it.”

“I know. I respect who you are out there, Kathryn.” He gestured with his head in the direction of the corridor. “But I’m more interested in who you are in here.” 

She fitted her hand to his neck. “In here, you are mine,” she purred. Then, softer and more sweetly, “And I’m yours.” She pulled him in for a luxurious kiss. When at last they broke apart she said, “We rendezvous with the Dauntless in three days, you know.”

“Yes,” he answered, a little confused at the abrupt change of topic. “The crew’s really looking forward to it. Are you thinking about Starfleet’s reaction to these new … parameters?”

“Captain La Forge is a friend,” she said. 

He was even more perplexed. “I’ve met him once or twice. Seems like a good man. But what do the Dauntless and La Forge have to do with us?”

She pushed up a little and gave him a doubtful expression. “Would you object to a shipboard ceremony? Something very simple?”

He grinned and ran his hand up her back. “Kathryn, I will marry you at any time or place you name. The sooner the better.”

She let her shoulders sag. “I’m so glad. I was afraid you were going to want a huge event with everyone we’ve ever met.”

“We’ll have that later,” he deadpanned, and watched her blue eyes go wide. He laughed and pulled her close. “You do know that we have a hundred fifty-one crewmen who won’t let us get away without a huge party, don’t you?” 

She drummed her fingers lightly on his collarbone, visibly making a plan. “I was thinking that Geordi would be able to do it, aboard the Dauntless, as soon as we rendezvous. Tuvok and B’Elanna can be witnesses.”

“Without even your mother and sister? Are you sure?” he asked. Now that she had said yes, making sure she never regretted it for a moment had moved sharply up his priority list.

Her face grew thoughtful at the mention of her family. “I know, Chakotay. We’ll have a celebration with them when we get home, and the crew too. My mother will adore you and Phoebe will tease you mercilessly. That’s what she does to men she likes.”

He tried to catch her eyes again but she was studying something on his chest. “Kathryn, what’s this about? You’ve managed to wait all this time to get me in bed….” He stopped and laughed at the indignant look on her face. “All this time to get me in bed,” he repeated, “but you don’t want to wait for a family wedding when we’re so close? What’s going on? You know, I had a little fantasy of my own going of you walking toward me on Tuvok’s arm, carrying peace roses.” He reached for a lock of her hair and wound it around his finger.

She opened her mouth as if to call his bluff and offer him the most outlandish, celebrity-style wedding Earth could conjure up, but he recognized the moment when she realized she couldn’t do it. Her face lost its animation.

“I just want it done,” she said in a soft breath. “This will sound superstitious and absurd, but I – I don’t have the best luck with engagements. I can’t lose you too. I’m strong, but I’m not strong enough for that, Chakotay. You saw what it did to the admiral.” She lay her head on his heart and held very still.

He wrapped his arms tight around her. “Yes,” he answered. “Let’s just get it done.”


	4. Of all the underhanded maneuvers ...

Three days had passed since Janeway accepted Chakotay’s ring. She put it on a chain and wore it under her uniform where, truth be told, she had never bothered to wear either Justin’s or Mark’s ring. She had taken so much for granted then, she reflected. This time, she would be wise enough to cherish every moment. She had tried to set aside the ring the first morning, after Chakotay had kissed her one last time and slipped back to his own quarters for a change of clothes, but it had a magnetic draw. She found that she couldn’t leave her cabin until it was nestled as a pendant between her breasts. It nudged her throughout the day, a persistent reminder that she hadn’t dreamed the previous night.

There had been precious few hours alone together to process what was happening. They were exhausting days, juggling non-stop Starfleet hails and frenetic planning for the crew’s arrival on Earth, but the moment the comm link closed or the door shut, the image that filled her mind was that of Chakotay, on one knee before her, holding up the ring. 

They fell into an easy pattern in those few days. She would key open the door. He would be there already, waiting, food queued up on the replicator because of course she wouldn’t have eaten. Some things hadn’t changed. He was across the room in an instant to pull her close in a quick kiss and a long hug. It was as if all the moments in seven years when they had longed to collapse into each other’s arms, but couldn't, had merged into ecstatic reunions each evening.

“I missed you,” he would say.

“Me too,” she would answer. He would mean to insist that she eat something right away, but she would press herself against him and seek his mouth with hers, and he would forget all about his good intentions somewhere around the time she jumped up and swung her legs around him to be carried into the bedroom.

“This is exactly why we couldn’t do this before now,” she whispered the third night, as she struggled to tear his jacket off him. “I can’t think about anything all day but getting you naked again.”

He dropped with her onto the bed. “After debriefings, I’m taking you to a deserted island somewhere and hiding your clothes for a month or so.”

She was tugging down his trousers as he attacked every inch of her skin with his lips the moment it was bared. 

“And what will you do with me, after you hide my clothes?” she asked with a wicked laugh.

He loomed over her on his hands and knees. “What _won’t_ I do to you would be a better question,” he said and lapped at her bare nipple with his tongue.

Afterward, he brought food and wine to the bedside table and fed her as she lay with her head propped on her hand, half-covered by the sheet.

“I talked to Seven today,” Janeway told him between bites of fruit. “She seemed a little stiffer than usual. Are you sure she wasn’t upset about ending your relationship?”

“It was hardly a relationship, Kathryn. A few dates. Although when I thought it over, I realized that what the Admiral said about her timeline made sense. We could have stumbled into a more permanent relationship just for lack of options, on both sides. You thought she was upset?”

“I said something about plans for the welcoming reception at Starfleet headquarters – the friends and family party they’re planning. I told her you would contact anyone she wanted to invite, and she made the strangest comment about how she would make her own arrangements because you would only do what served your needs.”

“Ouch.”

“I asked what she meant and she said she only meant your new responsibilities as a mate to me would preclude your taking a personal interest in her family affairs. She tried to gloss over it. I said we were both still very concerned about every member of the crew, and her in particular, because of her unique history.”

“And that was it?”

Janeway sighed. “Unfortunately, no. It’s like dealing with a very precocious child sometimes. She said that my hormonal levels were elevated and she wanted to know if we had already mated – just like that. I wanted to be straightforward with her, so I said yes, and then she wanted to know if that meant sexual intercourse.”

Chakotay raised his eyebrows and took a large sip of wine.

Janeway sighed. “I probably should have ended it right there, but I said yes. Then she wanted me to know that she had tried to initiate intercourse with you, but you put her off. She said you told her that you liked to move slowly toward intimacy. She wanted to know why you had not moved slowly with me.”

Chakotay tugged at his ear and looked sheepish. “Are you asking me too?”

Janeway shrugged. “If you want to answer. I think I probably know why.”

He reached out his right hand to thread his fingers through hers with a look that made her thighs clench together. “Let’s just say after seven years of foreplay, from the chair to the floor was about as long as I could wait.”

Janeway pulled his hand to her and slid one of his fingers in and out of her mouth. Chakotay shivered in response and they both forgot all about Seven of Nine until the entire senior staff came together for their first briefing aboard the Dauntless. Seven was there, as crisp and professional as ever, but lacking the edge of barely contained euphoria that the rest of the crew carried.

Janeway took Seven’s elbow. “Were you able to contact your family about the party, Seven?” she asked.

“Yes,” Seven answered. “They will be there.”

Chakotay made a move to approach her, but Seven circled to the far side of the table and swiftly took a seat as Captain La Forge called the meeting to order.

When the briefing was over, Janeway caught Chakotay’s eye as she rose to shake La Forge’s hand and thank him for his welcome.

“My very great pleasure, Captain,” La Forge said. “If there’s anything I can do for you or your crew, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Janeway glanced down and, to the astonishment of her assembled officers, Chakotay included, blushed. “As a matter of fact, Captain, there is one thing.” When she spoke her simple request, the staff lost all decorum. Everyone spoke at once.

“You did not propose without telling me!” Torres shouted at Chakotay, slamming a hand onto the table as she jumped from her chair.

“Congratulations!” Harry Kim exclaimed, clapping his hands together in unfiltered delight. He stood slowly, continuing to clap, cheeks reddening with the boyish joy that the Delta quadrant had never extinguished.

Tuvok said nothing but rose as swiftly as his eyebrows. Janeway looked at him and reached out a hand. “Tuvok,” she said, “would you stand up with me?”

“I would be most honored, Captain,” he answered, and moved to take the place at her shoulder that had so long belonged to Chakotay, even as he took in Seven’s non-reaction in the chair next to his.

Tom Paris laid both hands on the table and seemed to pass through a moment of shock. “Of all the underhanded maneuvers to defeat my betting pool,” he said loudly. He turned to point a finger at Chakotay, seated immediately to his right, who was taking in the mayhem with the face of a man perfectly content to observe. “You knew I had no Alpha quadrant scenarios!” 

Chakotay burst into well-satisfied laughter. “That’s right, Paris,” he said. “It’s all about you.” He swiveled slightly in his chair to look at the angry new mother glaring at him, hands on hips, next to Tom. “I’m sorry, B’Elanna. Would you still be willing to stand up with me?” 

Torres’s glower evaporated into her widest smile. “Any time, old man,” she said, and stepped toward the head of the table. “But if you hadn’t tipped me off that I needed to be at this briefing, I would have ripped off your arm to beat you with it, wedding or no wedding.”

Seven alone sat still and quiet, next to Tuvok’s empty chair. Janeway noticed and took a step in her direction, then stopped with uncharacteristic timidity when their eyes met. Seven observed the aborted advance and rose to face Janeway.

“Captain,” she said, “I wish you and the Commander every happiness. However, if you will forgive me, I am needed in Astrometrics.” She nodded to the assembled staff and left the room with her usual long stride. Janeway and Chakotay exchanged a glance and Janeway began to hurry after her, but Chakotay blocked her path.

“No, Kathryn, there’s no need. She’s okay, I promise. I’ll check in on her later,” he whispered.

Janeway nodded. “So will I.” 

At the head of the table, oblivious to the small drama that had just played out with Seven, La Forge had grown solemn at the request. 

“I would be honored,” he told Janeway when she returned to his side. He pulled up the language of the Federation standard marriage ceremony on his console in a matter of seconds and turned to face the couple. “Are we ready?” he asked.

Janeway reached under her collar and pulled out a light gold chain, weighed down by the blue stone and another, simpler ring. She detached the clasp and gave one ring to Torres, the other to Tuvok.

Chakotay moved to the replicator and ordered a floral arrangement by number. A dozen peace roses appeared, wrapped in white ribbon. He brought them with him as he took his place beside Janeway, facing La Forge.

“I finally remembered the flowers,” he said with a smile. Janeway beamed up at him and accepted them. 

“Computer, disable environmental alarms in the briefing room,” Chakotay ordered. He laid his phaser on the table, then pulled a few more small items from his pockets. He set a small chunk of resin in a charred bowl the size of his palm, then lit the resin with the phaser. It began to smoke and fill the room with a musky scent. 

“Now,” he announced to the room, “I think we’re ready.” 

La Forge picked up a PADD and began with ancient words the Federation had retained. 

“Dearly beloved….” The familiar phrase was strange and comforting within the sterile walls of the briefing room, like a glimpse of the earthly home that was now so much closer. Paris and Kim stood off to the side, grinning at their commanding officers as if the whole thing had been their idea. When Chakotay took the ring from Torres and slid it onto Janeway’s outstretched hand, even Tuvok cleared his throat. When Janeway slid the smooth, unblemished ring onto Chakotay’s finger and repeated, in a husky voice, “With this ring, I thee wed,” the big man lifted his other hand to brush his eyes.

Then La Forge looked up. “There is a place in the ceremony to speak your own vows, if you like.” They both nodded and took a firmer grasp on the other’s hands.

Chakotay spoke first. “My beloved Kathryn,” he said, “my captain, my soulmate, my peace, I call upon the four elements – water, earth, wind, and fire – to bless and strengthen our union. We are still far from the bones of our ancestors, but today I promise you that I will be your family, I will put your needs first, I will make your burdens lighter, as long as I have life and breath to give you.” 

As on that long ago evening in the shelter on New Earth, Janeway let a tear flow openly down her cheek. Beyond Chakotay’s shoulder, she saw tears on Torres’s face as well.

“My beloved Chakotay,” Janeway began, pulling his hands close to her, “my rock, my first mate in all things – you know that I insist on being a scientist first and foremost, but a few days ago I learned that there is a superstitious Irishwoman alive in me yet. She saw her destiny in you, from the beginning. You – ” her voice caught, but she charged ahead. “You make me more than I am without you. I know that I have been careless with your heart.” She gave a fierce little shake of her chin. “No more. From this day forward, I will guard it as my most precious possession.”

La Forge, as if fearing that the entire room might collapse into tears if the ceremony went on a moment longer, took his opening. 

“With the authority vested in me by Starfleet Command, I now pronounce you husband and wife,” he said, then in the sort of commanding voice that would put steel in the spine of any officer, he barked: “Commander Chakotay, I order you to kiss your captain!” 

“I thought you’d never ask,” Chakotay grinned at La Forge, and obeyed.


	5. Anything goes when you're 70,000 light years from the nearest court martial.

There was little chance that the crew reception in the forward lounge of the Federation starship Dauntless would not be a raging success. At their rendezvous point in the outer reaches of the Alpha quadrant, Captains La Forge and Janeway staffed both ships with skeleton crews and put the few working crewmembers on short rotations to ensure that every sentient being aboard both ships could join in the first homecoming festivities. The room was filled with food, flowers, and a full bar as the Dauntless crew awaited the arrival of their newly-returned comrades with a rising hum of excitement. Nobody had seen the Voyager crew in over seven years, and it was rumored that a full ship of Maquis had become part of the Starfleet crew sent to capture it. Talk of their incredible journey filled the room.

A few male Dauntless crewmen grouped at the back of the crowd, near one of the floor to ceiling viewports, where they didn't notice Captain La Forge circling their way.

“I heard there's even a Starfleet-Maquis couple who got married and had a baby,” the tall one, Crewman Barnes, said to his smaller colleague, Ensign Hernandez.

Hernandez shrugged. “What do you expect under a captain who'd make a ship of fugitives part of her crew. I heard from a friend back on Earth that there's already talk of prosecution.”

“Prosecution? What for?” Barnes set down one glass and seized two more from a passing tray.

Hernandez laughed. “You hadn't heard the rumors? More than rumors, really. Someone's been leaking vids in the datastream. Giving away Federation technology to warring species. Using sentient life forms as energy sources. Abuse of holographic technology. Unchecked fraternization. I guess Janeway decided anything goes when you're 70,000 light years away from the nearest court martial.”

“Ensign Hernandez,” La Forge said, just loudly enough that both of his subordinates turned toward him. Their faces transformed into apologetic masks when they saw who it was. “I believe I gave strict instructions to this entire crew to disregard anything you may have heard about the Voyager crew and give them the warmest welcome possible. Rumors are flying on Earth and we will consider every member of the Voyager crew innocent until proven guilty. No gossip, even seemingly benign, will be tolerated on board the Dauntless.”

“Yes sir!” Hernandez exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think about what I was saying. It won’t happen again.”

“Me either, sir,” Crewman Barnes echoed. “I apologize for the lapse.”

“Very good,” Captain La Forge nodded. “If you hear anyone else ‘lapsing,’ be sure to let them know what I said.” The two young men nodded eagerly and hurried away from him. La Forge turned to First Officer Lek, who stood beside him. “It’s starting already, even here, against my direct orders. This is going to be worse than I thought.”

Oblivious to the buzz of scandal that preceded them, the Voyager crew stepped into the same room with another full Starfleet crew for the first time in seven years, as timid as shy teenagers at a high school dance, for the first few minutes at least. Then drinks began to circulate, old friends fell into embraces, the noise level rose further, and the full senior staff filed in at the back of the crowd, beaming at their rejoicing juniors like proud parents. 

The last to enter the room were Janeway and Chakotay, walking arm's length apart in a cautious stance that mirrored their uncertainty about how the crew would be welcomed. At their appearance, Harry Kim began a cheer that the whole crowd instantly took up. In perfect Juilliard pitch, he began, “For they are jolly good fellows…” and by the final chorus, the deck plating shook with the cry, “and so say all of us!” 

Captain La Forge came forward to join their hands and raise a triumphant fist, before stepping behind the bar and pounding on the hard surface for attention. Two well disciplined crews fell silent.

“It is my great honor, and that of my entire crew, to welcome this legendary company of adventurers aboard the Dauntless,” La Forge said. “Our ship is your ship. We have been ordered to escort the Voyager into Earth’s orbit and provide for any immediate needs you may have. Our medical staff are at your disposal, as are our holodecks, lounge, replicators, and other facilities. Further instructions for your arrival on Earth will be forwarded individually. But for now, I have one very important announcement to make to both crews.”

The Dauntless crew, who had little reason to react anxiously to sudden news, smiled and stood at attention. A slightly different atmosphere charged the battle-weary Voyager crew, ready at all times for another life or death struggle – and especially the former Maquis, who were circulating rumors of their own about the reception they would find in Federation territory. La Forge noticed the tension he’d triggered. 

“This is nothing but good news,” he assured the crews. “This morning, after the senior staff meeting in my briefing room, I had an unusual and unexpected request, but one I was very happy to fulfill. I now have the unprecedented honor to announce …” he paused for dramatic effect, enjoying the perfect silence of the crowded room, “that Voyager’s command team are now husband and wife – or wife and husband, if you prefer.” La Forge grinned and gestured to Janeway and Chakotay with a dramatic sweep of his arm. 

The crowd let loose in even longer and louder cheers than before. Chakotay put his arm around his wife’s waist and, over her modest protest, drew her in to kiss her comprehensively as the Voyager crew stamped their feet and roared their approval. 

The blue stone glinted from where Janeway had snugged her arm around her husband’s neck. As they reluctantly pulled apart, she stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

“You put him up to this.”

Chakotay shrugged and grinned. “You’re wearing the ring,” he observed. “You’re out of uniform.”

Her eyes caught the challenge. “I’m off duty,” she parried. 

“Then no one can object if we sneak out,” he answered, just before the wave of congratulating crew overwhelmed and separated them.

Lek, a middle-aged Vulcan who had served several years with La Forge, took his captain by the elbow as the Voyager crew surged joyfully toward their commanding officers and the Dauntless crew retreated slightly, whispering among themselves.

“Was it wise to marry them, Captain?” Lek said at La Forge’s ear, eyeing the crowd's reaction. “Knowing what they will face on Earth?”

La Forge held his face expressionless and answered without turning to Lek, letting the noise of the party mask his voice. “Kathryn Janeway is a friend, and she’s been to hell and back. I consider this the least I could do for her, considering.”

Lek absorbed this predictably sentimental, human response without any visible reaction. “This may increase their difficulties, especially given her choice of husband. There are rumors of grave breaches of protocol, even violations of the Prime Directive. I question the prudence of this step at this time.”

La Forge accepted a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, took a sip, then turned and said tersely to Lek, “After what they’ve been through, I don’t think they give a damn about prudence. They wanted to be married, and they deserve that much. Starfleet officers are allowed to get married. Let’s give them a few moments of happiness.”

Restoring the welcoming smile to his face, La Forge faced the crowd. On the far side of the room he saw Barnes and Hernandez facing forward at parade rest, studiously making no comment on the scene unfolding, but also not smiling, not applauding the union of the Starfleet and Maquis captains. La Forge sighed and left his champagne on a nearby tabletop. The fizz had gone off the moment. Across the room, under an assault of well-wishers, Janeway caught his eye. He understood in an instant that she too had taken in the larger scene. Even as she smiled and accepted embraces from her crew, her eyes did not join in the celebration. They were tight with worry. 


	6. He had been hasty.

As soon as he was back on Voyager, Chakotay forced himself to take the walk to Astrometrics to check in on Seven. Not since she was newly separated from the Collective and he had been almost afraid to be in the same room with her had Chakotay so dreaded the sight of Seven. He had a nagging, unpleasant sensation deep in his belly, buried under all the elation of the day, telling him that he'd done something he shouldn't have. It was tied to Seven. He couldn't quite articulate yet what he'd done wrong, but it was there. 

When he entered Astrometrics, Seven's back was to the door and Neelix's grave face was on the big screen. 

"I just can't believe that the commander would do such a ..." Neelix was saying. His voice trailed off when he saw Chakotay enter and he drew back from the screen. "I'd better go. You two have a lot to discuss. Seven, contact me any time if you need to talk. Any time." He quickly ended the transmission before Chakotay had a chance to greet him.

“You didn’t come back for the party,” Chakotay said from the door. “You were missed.”

Seven turned her head to watch him walk toward her, then looked away. She began to tap busily at her console.

“I doubt that.”

“You were,” Chakotay insisted. “I heard several people ask where you were. And I don’t believe there was anything so pressing in Astrometrics that you needed to leave the briefing room abruptly. What’s going on, Seven? I thought you agreed that it was the right decision to end our relationship.”

Seven paused in her work and seemed to search for words. “I did not wish to create – awkwardness between us. However, I did not expect such an instantaneous shift in your affections. People are laughing at me.”

Chakotay came to a halt several feet from her. “Laughing at you? What do you mean?”

Seven pushed away from her workstation to face him. “Computer, close door,” she ordered. The door slid shut. “I heard what crewmembers were saying as they came back from the party. Many of them were inebriated, and they appear unaware of my superior hearing. They said you were ‘just having a little fun’ with me. I ‘meant nothing’ to you. You ‘ran back to Captain Janeway’ the instant we arrived in the Alpha quadrant. I was your ‘little Borg plaything until Kathryn Janeway crooked her finger.’” Seven repeated the precisely mimicked phrases while glaring at Chakotay. “You have deceived and humiliated me in front of the entire crew.” 

Chakotay rubbed his face and exhaled long and wearily. “I’m so sorry, Seven. I had no idea people even knew we were dating.”

“Apparently we were not as discreet as we thought.”

“There aren’t many secrets on board a starship this size, that’s for sure.”

Seven shot a dark glance his way before turning back to the console. “It was your and Captain Janeway’s decision to marry immediately that subjected me to ridicule. If you had allowed more time to pass, people might have seen it as a natural transition. Your actions were … hasty, and cruel.” 

Chakotay braced himself against the nearest console as a new awareness of what he had just done began to creep over him. He had spent the last few days in a radiant haze, unable to see beyond the all-consuming images in his mind of Kathryn Janeway accepting his ring, launching herself into his arms, pulling him with her to the floor – in an instant he was there again, even as he tried to find words to respond to Seven’s distress. He had been so wrapped up in the miracle of their return to the Alpha quadrant and everything it meant that he had forgotten how far he had committed himself to the future he had been creating in the Delta quadrant, with Seven, in a timeline that Admiral Janeway had just smashed like a glass vase hitting a marble floor. 

She was right. He had been hasty. He had thought of nothing but Kathryn from the moment he’d broken up with Seven. He’d adopted overnight a pleasantly retrospective view of their relationship as completely inconsequential, to both him and Seven. He had been so happy with the change that he had not considered the possibility that it would be less welcome to Seven - or indeed, actively painful. Suddenly it occurred to him to wonder exactly how much she knew about that other timeline. Kathryn had told him things he'd rather not know, and he knew the Admiral had spoken to Seven about the future too. He sighed as he remembered how cavalier they had all been, so many times, with the Temporal Prime Directive.

Chakotay cleared his throat. “What did the Admiral tell you about her timeline? When she said you’d hurt me?”

“She told me everything. She told me you would be my husband. She said I would die in your arms and you would never recover from the loss.”

Chakotay’s eyebrows flared. "She said you would die in my arms?"

Seven crooked an expressive eyebrow and Chakotay shook his head.

“I don't know what to believe anymore. She told Kathryn that I would marry you. Maybe she told her the rest and Kathryn didn't want to tell me. Seven, looking back on the last few weeks, I realize it must have seemed very abrupt, what happened today. I just thought - you seemed to understand immediately. You knew that Kathryn and I would want to be together. You seemed so wise about it all.”

Seven’s nostrils flared. “You told me we were on intimate terms. You … led me to believe you had feelings for me. After what the Admiral told me about our future together … I was not prepared for Captain Janeway’s request of Captain La Forge. I was not prepared to watch you make vows to her when only a few days ago I -” Seven broke off and looked away.

“Only a few days ago what?” Chakotay asked gently.

“Only a few days ago I had the doctor remove my emotional failsafe so that I would be able to fall in love with you!” 

She took an unsteady step backward and stumbled against the console behind her. Instinctively, Chakotay jumped forward to grab her arm and stop her fall. Seven grabbed his shoulder with her hand to right herself and her momentum swung her hard against his chest. Just as she had in his quarters less than a week earlier, Seven wrapped her fingers around his neck and pulled him hard into a kiss.

Chakotay was already bringing up his hands to push Seven away when the sound of the door drew their attention. As they broke apart at the sound, the doorway opened, revealing Captain Janeway. She wore a look of blank shock.


	7. I know it in my bones.

Janeway pivoted on one heel and marched off along the curving corridor, disappearing from the open doorway like an apparition come and gone. For an instant, Chakotay wasn’t even sure she’d been there, but then he looked back at Seven and saw the emotion on her face, more than he’d ever seen there, distress and anger and something approaching panic all mixed up together like the face of a child who has just realized she is lost in a crowd, separated from the grown-up hand that has led her securely up to now. Guilt struck at his heart. He had done this to her.

But in this moment of extremity, he could not contradict the imperatives of his heart. Chakotay stared for only a second at Seven before twisting hard away from her clutching fingers and sprinting after Janeway. When he spotted her, she was already well ahead of him, moving as quickly as she could toward the turbolift without breaking into a run, but he caught her easily.

“Kathryn, it’s not -” was all he got out before she held up a hand.

“Not here!” she ordered, with a meaningful glance up and down the corridor.

Chakotay did not dare to argue with the steel of that profile. Crewmembers were still drifting through the ship back to their quarters or Tom’s updated Sandrine’s holo-scenario as the Dauntless party broke up. When they saw Janeway and Chakotay, each would smile broadly and offer congratulations. Janeway accepted these expressions of warmth and happiness with a frozen mask of appreciation until they reached the privacy of the ‘lift.

“Computer, shut doors,” she said, and turned to him. “Two hours. We’ve been married two hours, Chakotay. If my engagements were disasters, maybe I should have taken the hint that actually getting married would be a catastrophe of galactic scale!” She leaned against the wall and pinched the bridge of her nose. 

“Kathryn, it’s not what you think.”

“What I think?” Janeway roused herself and straightened. “What I saw was you and Seven kissing. Are you going to tell me that my eyes deceive me?”

“You saw Seven kissing me, for as long as it took me to push her away. I went to check on her after what happened in the briefing room earlier – just like you must have been doing.”

“And she got the impression that kissing you was the appropriate response?” Janeway’s words fell like loose metal bearings onto the deck, cold clicks. “It must have been quite the expression of concern.”

Chakotay bit his lip and considered his next words carefully. “It – everything that’s happened is completely my fault. I never should have agreed to pursue a relationship with Seven when I was still in love with you. It was terrible judgment, and unfair to both of you. And I should have gone more slowly after breaking up with her. Coming to you with a ring like that – it was this fantasy of mine that I’d held onto for so long, I didn’t see that cirumstances had changed – that I’d changed circumstances.”

Janeway’s face grew ashen and she looked down at the ring, still on her finger from their wedding ceremony. “What exactly are you saying, Chakotay? You regret what we just did? The last few days?”

“No!” He took a step forward, but her manner held him off like a force field. She was so distant and frozen, as if the air around her had congealed. He approached as close as he dared and reached out but didn’t touch her. “I don’t regret a moment I’ve spent with you. These past few days have been the happiest days of my life. But I also hurt Seven, and I do regret that. I don’t know how to make it right. And I’m mortified that this is what I’ve made of our wedding day.”

Janeway looked into his eyes, searching and questioning. He blinked and focused on showing her his soul, the truth of all he had said. Slowly, Janeway began to shake her head. “All right. I’m going to talk to her. We’ll work this out. It was – part of this was my fault, too. I insisted on getting married right away. It was insensitive of me, knowing you’d just ended a relationship with Seven. I didn’t take her feelings into account. We both got carried away.”

Chakotay frowned. “I led you to think it was less serious than it was. I had … said things to her that I shouldn’t have. We had talked about the future. And Kathryn, she told me something else just now. She recently had the doctor remove her emotional failsafe – so that she could fall in love with me, she says.” He spoke the last words with his head bowed, reluctant to admit this, but more afraid of the consequences if he didn’t. “It sounds even worse when I say it aloud. I trifled with someone who was essentially a child, taking her first steps toward emotional maturation. I may have done her irreparable damage.”

For the first time since they’d left Astrometrics, Janeway made a move toward him and patted his arm.

“The heartbreak that almost inevitably follows first love does not ruin a woman for life,” she said in a wry voice. “Trust me. I’ve been there too. You men aren’t quite that powerful.”

Chakotay sighed and studied her face, which had opened and softened enough to give him hope. “Forgive me?” he asked. “For being a complete idiot?”

Janeway offered a tired half-smile. “I think we both forgave each other for that a long time ago. It’s an iterative process. Computer, open doors.” She gave Chakotay a quick hug and began to pull away with the obvious intent of seeking Seven, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Kathryn,” he said suddenly, urgently, against her hair. A horrifying thought had just formed, full and real and undeniable. “She told me what the Admiral told her. About her dying.”

Janeway slumped a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you needed to know about that. It will never happen now.”

“But I just understood.” He pulled back enough to see Janeway’s face. “I know what happened, Kathryn. I know why she died.”

“What do you mean? How could you know?”

“It all came clear to me, after the way she reacted just now. She died trying to be like you. Trying to win my love.”

Janeway searched his face for some better understanding of what he was saying. “What do you mean, win your love? In that timeline, she was your wife.”

He shook his head. “She was my wife, but I was still in love with you, and she knew it. That’s what would have happened, in that timeline. I can’t explain but I know it in my bones. She was trying to be bold and daring like you, like the woman I love, because she had figured us out. That’s why I could never recover from her death – because my guilt destroyed the possibility of us too. I lost both of you because of my stupidity. That’s what happened, Kathryn. That’s what the Admiral had to change. Don’t you see?”

Janeway’s mouth fell open in the horror of recognition. 

“Oh, Chakotay,” she whispered. “Oh no.”


	8. A kind of restraint?

Janeway and Chakotay stared at each other, arms still loosely around each other, lost for words for long seconds. Chakotay’s declaration hung in the air like prophecy. Janeway could find no arguments against it, as much as she wanted to.

“Well,” she said finally. “We have a new start. We’ll watch out for her.”

“Yes. We will know better.”

“I should go see her.”

Her badge chirped to life. “Tuvok to Janeway.” Automatically, she stepped away from Chakotay, as if caught in a compromising position.

“Go ahead.”

“There has been an unauthorized shuttle launch. Seven of Nine is on board.”

“Computer! Bridge!” Janeway ordered. The ‘lift clicked to life and began speeding upward. “Janeway to Tuvok: status of the shuttle? Were you able to tractor it?”

“Negative,” came Tuvok’s unruffled voice. “However, there appears to be a force field in place that we were not aware of. The Dauntless has moved closer to tractor the shuttle.”

“The Dauntless?” Janeway repeated in a baffled tone. “A force field?” The ‘lift doors opened onto the bridge and she strode out with Chakotay at her shoulder. 

“Captain,” Tuvok greeted her.

She came to the far side of his console. “Force field? What kind of force field?”

Tuvok cleared his throat and studied his readings. “It appears that the Dauntless is employing a new technology that creates a force field around our entire ship. We did not detect it because it operates at a distance beyond the ship’s short-range sensors. We could have detected it had we known what to look for, but we had no reason to believe that the Dauntless might be trying to restrain Voyager’s movements.”

“You’re saying this is a kind of restraint?” Chakotay asked, his voice on edge. “To keep us from running?”

Janeway gave him an anxious glance. “What would we have to run from? Tuvok, have you had any explanation from the Dauntless?”

“Not yet,” Tuvok answered. “Our communications have focused on the unauthorized shuttle launch and taking Seven of Nine into custody. She will be held in the Dauntless brig pending further orders.”

“I have to go talk to her,” Janeway said immediately. “I’m on my way to the transporter room. Chakotay, you have the bridge.”

“Captain,” said Tuvok, “do you have any idea why Seven would steal a shuttle?”

Janeway cast her gaze down for a second before facing him. “I’m afraid I do. I’ll brief you when I get back, Tuvok.”

By beaming aboard the Dauntless, Janeway was waiting outside the brig when two armed security officers led Seven, hands shackled in front of her, to the doors. Seven shrank from the sight of her captain. Her neck reddened with the first blush Janeway had ever seen on her – the signs of the disabled emotional failsafe, no doubt. Seven must be like a hormonal adolescent at this point, all emotion and no idea how to handle it.

“Hello Seven,” Janeway greeted her. “We need to talk.”

“I see no need,” Seven answered. The guards led her inside the brig – larger than Voyager’s – and into one of the cells. They removed her wrist restraints, stepped out of the cell, and activated the force field. Seven turned her back to the aperture. Janeway gestured to the main guard on duty to leave them alone and he followed the others out. She positioned herself facing Seven’s stiff back.

“You stole a shuttle, Seven. There are severe penalties for that, especially now that we’re back in Federation space. I need to understand what happened.”

“I do not acknowledge your authority,” Seven said. “I am not a member of Starfleet. I wish to return to the Delta quadrant. It is the only home I remember. That is all I was attempting to do.”

Janeway shifted from one foot to the other. “Will you look at me, Seven?”

Seven hugged herself. “My optical node is … I do not wish to cry.”

“I don’t want to make you cry. I just want to explain why Chakotay and I got married so quickly. And to apologize. You were right, it was hasty. It was not my intent to hurt you. I don’t think we’ve ever discussed this, Seven, but I’ve lost two fiancés – one died, and the other was left behind when the Caretaker pulled Voyager into the Delta quadrant. It was my idea to marry immediately. Superstitious, I suppose. I just couldn’t face the thought of losing him.”

Seven’s hand went to her face but still she didn’t turn around. “Hardly comforting words for the person who has lost him,” she said coldly.

Janeway clasped her hands and waited for any further word or sign of movement from Seven, some unbending, but there was nothing, just that stiff back in its biosuited armor, not quite Borg but not quite human either.

“All right. I’ll be back.”

From the brig, Janeway queried the computer and followed its directions to Captain La Forge’s quarters. When she rang the chime and the doors slid back, he was at the table facing a screen gone black. Janeway wanted to ask who had just vacated the screen but La Forge was already on his feet, coming forward to greet her as she stepped in.

“Kathryn,” he said. “I was expecting you. Let me guess, you want to know about the force field?”

Janeway faced him and exhaled. Of course Geordi would be straight with her. “Are we prisoners?” she asked.

La Forge matched her ponderous exhalation. “Not as such. There was concern that some individuals might have reason to flee after this abrupt return to the Alpha quadrant. Perhaps even Voyager herself.”

“You thought we spent the last seven years trying to get home just to turn around and run away?”

“Not everyone. Not you. But I’ll be honest, Kathryn – after today, there are also concerns about you and your loyalty to Starfleet. There are those who see your whole crew as Maquis rather than Starfleet.”

Janeway’s face grew red and her throat constricted. “We have been a Starfleet crew since the beginning. How could anyone question that? Who questions that?”

La Forge sighed. “I just heard from Admiral Nechayev. She’s heading up the debriefings. I think she’s been listening to rumors a little too much. I tried to talk her down, but I think you should expect a grilling when you reach Earth. It will all be resolved in the end. I’m sure of it. You just have to hang in there. You’re home. I’ll do everything I can to support you. All your friends will.”

Janeway nodded curtly. “I’m sure you’re right, Geordi.” She turned toward the door, then turned back with a question that had just occurred to her. “After today, you said. You mean, after the wedding?”

La Forge took off his visor and faced her with his eerie, pale blue eyes. “Yes, Kathryn. I’m sorry. You’ve done nothing wrong, but some people are trapped in the past.”

“I see,” she said. “Goodnight, Geordi.” 

Janeway returned to the Dauntless transporter room with slumped shoulders and an uncharacteristically plodding pace. It was still technically her wedding day, but that moment seemed light years away. The transporter technician congratulated her and she responded with an automatic smile and thank you, hardly aware of what she was saying. Voyager was quiet, the corridors empty, as she made her way to her quarters, where Chakotay would be waiting.

He rose from the sofa when she entered. They came together not in a rush but with tired, walking steps and wrapped their arms around each other without a word.


	9. She preferred to retain all the armor she could.

Seven stood against the wall of her cell aboard the Dauntless. She was still more comfortable standing than sitting or lying down, in spite of the Doctor’s efforts to modify her implants to reduce her need for the supportive biosuit. She was approaching the day, he had assured her, when she could abandon it forever. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Aside from scattered, imprecise memories, she had lived in some kind of exoskeleton all her life. The biosuit was less restrictive than her Borg armor, but armor it was all the same. In this new world of humans who seemed to be her friends, even her intimates, but were capable of jettisoning her in a matter of days, she preferred to retain all the armor she could.

It was night on the ship’s schedule. Lights were low to induce sleep, but Seven had never developed the habit of sleep. She would need to regenerate soon. Surely someone would remember that and see to it – or maybe they wouldn’t, and she would slowly cease to function. She didn’t know what would happen then. Aboard her cube, she had witnessed the termination of Borg who failed to regenerate for too long due to malfunctions or unexpectedly prolonged missions. They were simply recycled. 

This might be how she would die: standing in a Starfleet brig, waiting for someone to remember that she wasn’t exactly human. A suffocating sensation rose from somewhere low in her chest, something she’d never felt before. Her lungs constricted and her breathing grew shallow. Her heart rate accelerated wildly and she braced her hands against the wall for support as the cell began to swim. Was this what a panic attack felt like? She had once heard a human crewman describe the feeling. She had never expected – or wanted – to experience it herself. 

Seven shut her eyes and focused on taking deeper breaths. The only way to soothe herself was to focus on the last time she’d been alone with Chakotay, in his quarters. She would never forget the feel of his arms around her, his lips on hers, soft and warm, a sensation she’d only ever felt with Axum, but so much more real. Her senses had provided more data than ever before: the warm, musky scent of him, the slight roughness of his cheek, the rumble of his voice in his chest as he asked for a second kiss, and her own vibrant response, in parts of her body she hadn’t understood to be capable of such a powerful reaction. 

She needed that feeling. It had transformed her into something she longed to be. Before, she had been less than human, a monstrous hybrid who frightened people. But in Chakotay’s arms, she had begun to leave behind that half-life and become a real woman. The future had been there in front of her: love, marriage, a true human life. The accident that ended her life might have been avoidable with forewarning – or maybe the Admiral had lied about that too, as part of her ruthless plan to rip Chakotay from Seven’s arms. Wasn't it possible that the Admiral was simply a jealous woman who altered the timeline to give herself a second chance at Seven's husband?

Yes, it would have been the life she'd imagined. With the emotional failsafe removed, Chakotay would have helped her complete her transformation to a real human woman, very soon. If it hadn’t been for the two Janeways – the Admiral and the Captain, working together to steal him from her - all this would have come to pass in the natural order of things. She had been too naïve to see it when Admiral Janeway appeared, but she should have understood when the Admiral told her that story and proposed changing the timeline. The old timeline had been Seven’s best chance at a real life. It had been hers to defend. 

As she thought over what had transpired, Seven was both bereft and exasperated with herself. With her superior intelligence, she should have seen through the Admiral’s manipulations. It was so obvious now that the new timeline benefited one person more than all others: Kathryn Janeway. No more wasting a Starfleet career traversing the Delta quadrant, to arrive home an old woman, or not at all. No more missing the family left behind on Earth. And no more depriving herself of the chance to reel in Chakotay like a fish on a hook, while tossing Seven overboard for a life she had never wanted in the Alpha quadrant. Seven saw it all now, how cruelly Janeway had sacrificed Seven’s - and in all likelihood, Chakotay's - happiness to secure her own, even if it meant violating a whole list of Starfleet directives, prime and otherwise. She had never seen Captain Janeway more clearly or understood her so well as she did tonight. 

Fortunately, Seven knew a thing or two about changing the timeline herself. A smile curled her lips and she opened her eyes.


	10. To save them all from each other.

It was good to lie next to Chakotay when she woke in the night, as she often did, the restlessness of the 152 souls in her care - she included him in that count - stirring her back to consciousness when she most needed sleep. It had been her habit all these years to rise and find some useful way to pass the wakeful hours: reviewing reports, studying star charts and ship’s data, recording logs. This time when she pushed back the blanket and began to sit up, Chakotay’s strong arm wrapped tighter around her and pulled her back down.

“Mm,” he said, and kissed her ear in his sleep. She wiggled a little to see if she could get out from under his arm without waking him. He settled his big hand on her breast and cuddled closer. His heavy thigh stretched across her leg and pinned her. “Love you, Kathryn,” he mumbled. A few seconds later he lapsed into a soft, breathy snore, sound asleep, more firmly wound around her than before.

Janeway smiled and relaxed into his embrace to contemplate the day ahead. She would speak to the doctor about Seven. What had he been thinking, removing the emotional failsafe without Janeway’s authorization and leaving Seven to face the consequences on her own? It was completely irresponsible. Perhaps the crew’s changed situation would even justifying restoring the failsafe for a time, until Seven had adjusted a little to life beyond Voyager. This was all too much, too soon. No wonder Seven had tried to run away – just like the adolescent she was.

If they had remained in the Delta quadrant, it would have been different. Seven would have stayed in their closed environment with Chakotay to guide her through the next steps of her maturation. The Admiral’s timeline would have unfolded quite naturally. The thought caught Janeway off guard. Before the abrupt return to the Alpha quadrant and Chakotay’s almost-as-abrupt proposal, she had believed herself at peace with how the flame of their attraction had slowly burned itself out. It was imaginable that at some future point in that timeline, she could have officiated at his wedding to Seven without excessive heartburn. She would have found ways to justify that outcome to herself. She would have made the best of it, as she had made the best of so many difficult outcomes over the last seven years.

Chakotay’s stricken words in the turbolift had overturned that whole line of thinking. If she was honest, she was overjoyed to discover that he still harbored the same feelings for her that she had once felt for him, before she had convinced herself that he was a pleasure she could never allow herself. Some part of her – the part that had said yes and leapt into his lap – had never stopped loving him. The thought of how that love would have been twisted, the damage it would have done to innocent Seven as the years stretched out in the Delta quadrant, made Janeway’s throat constrict and her skin crawl. The more she thought about it, the more she was certain he was right. The Admiral had come back to save them all from each other. Her actions made more sense now, but still they had been rash and blatantly illegal act. She might find herself court-martialed for the behavior of her future self, among other things. And Geordi's words came back to her as well. By marrying Chakotay, she had aligned herself with the Maquis in the minds of certain people. She should have foreseen this. She should have been more strategic. She had thrown seven years of caution to the stars and now they would all pay the consequences. 

Chakotay felt her anxious twitch against him.

“Shhh,” he said automatically as he awoke. He kissed her neck with warm lips. “What is it, my beloved?”

She wrapped her hand around his. “Just thinking about Seven. It was awful, what you said. What we would have done to her.”

A few warm breaths blew across her neck as he considered.

“It wouldn’t have been intentional. That’s the tragedy of it. We would all have done the best we could, and that would have been the outcome. I never could stop loving you, not in any timeline.” 

She lay silent for a few minutes, debating whether or not to express her other concerns. The habit of confiding in her first officer finally won out. "We've made things harder for ourselves, you know."

He dropped a kiss on her clavicle and smiled against her soft skin. "That's not how it looks from where I am," he said.

"You know what I mean. As far as Admiral Nechayev is concerned, I'm sleeping with the enemy."

Chakotay flopped onto his back. "I never liked her."

"She seems to be taking charge of debriefings. It's going to get rough."

He felt for her hand and grasped it. "All the more reason for us to be together."

"Yes," she said. His breathing grew slow and regular as sleep towed him down again, but Janeway was wide awake, staring at the ceiling panels. He loved her and she loved him and they had finally confessed it, and that was good. It would be a support through everything they might now have to endure. But she couldn't suppress the feeling that she had made the whole crew more vulnerable to threats beyond her control - and that was terrifying.


	11. They have forgotten me.

Of the Voyager crew, only Seven had the surreal experience of watching Voyager enter Earth’s orbit from outside the ship. She was still aboard the Dauntless, with the Doctor in Sickbay. Captain La Forge had the bridge video feed relayed to them so that both could watch Voyager descend gently through the outer atmosphere as it dropped out of orbit on an approach vector for San Francisco. 

A few minutes later, the images switched to Earth-generated images of the ship emerging as a blip in a blue autumn sky over the Pacific. Seven gasped softly. She had only rarely seen Voyager from the outside. There had been no space-docking and very few planetary landings during her time on the ship. She was stunned at its beauty, even slightly battered by its recent transwarp journey.

The Doctor and Seven remained riveted by the monitor as Voyager landed in the grounds of Starfleet headquarters, a short distance from a set of white tents set up for the friends and family homecoming reception. 

“We’d better get to the transporter room.” The Doctor interrupted the feed with the click of a holographic finger on a panel and offered Seven his arm.

“You are certain I will be welcome?” Seven asked.

The Doctor made a face. “Of course you’re welcome, Seven. You’re a member of our family, and today you get to see your Earth family.”

“Yes,” she said and laid her hand on the Doctor’s arm. “Of course.”

“Are you sure you want to leave the emotional failsafe deactivated?” he asked one last time. They’d been having some form of this conversation most of the day, but Seven was resolute. She shook her head again and smoothed the tailored pantsuit she had chosen to replace the snug outfits she’d been accustomed to aboard Voyager.

“I must get on with my life,” she said.

“I see,” said the Doctor, but as they moved toward the door, she saw him pocket a hypospray. 

“What is that?”

“Only a mild sedative,” he told her. “This may be a bigger challenge than you realize.”

She really had no idea what she was about to face, she acknowledged to herself. But for that matter, neither did the Doctor. He was just as innocent of human social interactions as she was, for all his sophisticated programming. They left Sickbay together, two new souls cast into an unknown world. 

After a quick, easy transport, they materialized in Voyager’s transporter room and moved quickly to the main hatch, where Admiral Paris and a few other dignitaries had boarded to greet the senior staff and escort them to the reception.

At the front of the crowd, as always, stood Captain Janeway, crisp in her dress uniform. Chakotay was at her shoulder in a fresh dress uniform of his own. To Seven he looked formal and distant, a different person from the one she had come to know so well. She watched Admiral Paris clap him on the arm and offer warm congratulations as they shook hands - congratulations on the marriage, no doubt. For the first time, Seven realized how advantageous the pairing was politically. Marriage to a high-ranking Starfleet officer might protect not just Chakotay but all the former Maquis. A business arrangement, really. But then as the admirals stepped away, Chakotay put a hand on Janeway’s back and brushed her temple with his lips, the lightest touch possible, but he closed his eyes, and there was no mistaking how his face filled with emotion. Seven's throat caught. Then in a choreographed instant, Chakotay and Janeway's eyes rose together to see Seven and the Doctor at the edge of the group. All four froze.

Ever the diplomat, Janeway smoothed her uniform jacket and stepped toward them. “How nice to see you both. Please join us for the reception.” She gestured to a place behind Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres in the queue that had formed along the corridor. Through the open hatch, the sounds of a string quartet drifted into spaces that had been quiet for years. Janeway's smile was stiff but steady. She waited for them to respond.

“Thank you, Captain,” the Doctor said with a smile. “And may I join the crowd waiting to congratulate you on bringing Voyager home safely?” He held Seven’s hand snugly against his side while reaching out to shake Janeway’s hand. The moment passed, and a few minutes later they were all walking down the long ramp toward the party.

There was less fanfare than Seven had imagined for this moment – no fireworks or brass bands – but still what seemed an enormous crowd pressing forward. As the Doctor scanned the assembly for the Hansens, she drew close to him and watched as families rushed forward to embrace her crewmates, laughing and crying. The noise level grew precipitously.

“It’s so loud,” she said to the Doctor.

“What?” he shouted and towed her to the left. Through a gap she saw two women letting go of Captain Janeway and pulling Chakotay into their arms. This was the captain’s family, no doubt, greeting a new son and brother. Seven wondered briefly where Chakotay’s family was, then remembered they lived off-planet and would probably need weeks to arrive. 

“Annika,” the Doctor was saying insistently. Seven hardly recognized the name until he repeated it, louder each time, in her ear for the third or fourth time. She turned away from her view of the Janeways to see three tall blonde women and a similarly complected man grouped together a few feet away, watching her with anticipation and controlled smiles.

The oldest woman stepped forward. “We’re your grandparents, Annika,” she said, tears in her eyes. “My name is Inga. We never thought we’d see you again. To have you here – it’s a joy we’d never dreamed of.” She held out her hands slowly, as if unsure what Seven might do.

Seven glanced at the Doctor and took a deep breath. She put her hands in her grandmother’s. “I’m happy to see you too,” she said. “But this is all very new to me. I will need some time to … adapt.”

The others came forward, gave their names, and stiffly kissed Seven’s cheeks. Out of the corner of her eye, toward the middle of the tent, she saw Chakotay’s arm settle around Janeway’s waist as he leaned in to whisper in her ear. Janeway laughed and moved closer to him, taking shelter within his arm even surrounded as they were by several members of her family chattering enthusiastically as waiters hovered to pass out drinks and hors d’œuvres. Seven checked to be sure that the Doctor was still beside her. He had shifted just enough to let her family move closer, but suddenly all the proximity was stifling.

Seven felt a sudden constriction in her chest. She was not well. The swell of emotions was choking her. She didn’t know how to name all of them, but words were bubbling to the surface out of deepest memory. Anger. Resentment. Jealousy. Rage. She threw another glance toward the Janeway crowd, where a few small children were ducking and playing among the adults. That would come next: children. She, Seven, would be expected to welcome Chakotay’s children with Janeway, that should have been her own. She put a hand to her throat.

“Excuse me,” she said to the Doctor, “I think I need a little air.”

He excused them both and graciously led her to a bench at the edge of the open-sided marquee.

“Are you all right, Annika?” he asked. That name, she thought. They were already insisting that she was a different person, like she had no rightful claim to the life they had taken from her. “I could administer a sedative.”

“No. No sedatives.” She was breathing heavily and opened her jacket against the late afternoon warmth.

“Was it just having the family all around you like that? They mean well, Annika. They just want to get to know you. We can arrange other meetings under less stressful circumstances.”

She lifted her head. “It’s not them. They were … fine. I am having difficulty adjusting to the altered social parameters with the entire crew. I have no experience with such a large group. The relationships I developed on board have no relevance here.”

“But that’s not true!” the Doctor objected. “I’m still your friend. I’ll see you through this. I understand that it's difficult.”

Seven didn’t look at the Doctor as she answered. “I mean no offense, but you are a hologram, and also our medical officer. To you, I am a patient in need of assistance. But the others – look at them. They have forgotten me.”

“That’s just not true, Annika.”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped. “My name is Seven. If you want to help me, you will help me obtain a Starfleet assignment that will allow me to use my skills as quickly as possible. I need to move on and make my own life. I don't want any more of this.”

The Doctor beamed at this evidence of forward momentum and Seven’s intention to adapt. “Of course! Of course I’ll help you.”

Seven rose. “I’d like to leave.”

“Yes, of course. I know where our quarters are. Would you like to go there?”

Seven nodded an affirmative. The Doctor helped her to her feet. They moved around the edge of the crowd as it divided to make way for Chakotay and Janeway’s progress hand in hand to the small dance floor, where a fiddler had just cast out the first sweet strains of the Tennessee Waltz. A singer stepped forward and Seven caught a few words of the song. 

_I remember the night_  
_and the Tennessee Waltz_  
_Now I know just how much I have lost_  
_Yes I lost my little darling_  
_the night they were playing_  
_the beautiful Tennessee Waltz._

Janeway and Chakotay began to dance, accompanied by the hoots and cheers of the crew. The Doctor smiled and led Seven away, never noticing the look in her narrowed eyes as they followed the dancers.

TO BE CONTINUED.


	12. They don't look too friendly, do they?

The crew – all 153 of them – assembled before 0800 hours the next morning in an auditorium at Starfleet headquarters. A panel of admirals stood behind a table in the well of the hall, preparing to take their seats. Admiral Nechayev was at the center, chairing the event. As the minutes ticked away until the appointed hour, she moved among the admirals, speaking in a low voice, apparently briefing them about what was about to happen. Their serious expressions only confirmed Janeway’s apprehensions.

Janeway, standing in front of the rows of seats, saw Seven enter wearing her brown biosuit and looking as Borg as she ever had. The Doctor followed her nervously, whispering words to which she did not respond. The two of them took seats at the end of the front row. Harry Kim entered the hall with a step that might better be described as a skip, took in the scene, sobered, pulled down his jacket, and came to stand near the captain.

"They don't look too friendly, do they?" he asked.

"I feel like I'm back in Devore space," Janeway said, but the joke fell flat. They had all spent too long imagining the welcome back on Earth to find anything funny about this cold shoulder.

"It is an unusual situation for everyone," Tuvok noted. "The better we cooperate, the sooner they will see that this is an exemplary Starfleet crew."

"They've had our logs for months," Chakotay said. "They should know that already."

Janeway patted his arm. "I gave a lot of thought to my statement. I think it will put their minds at ease."

She had slipped away from the dinner for crew friends and families the previous evening to work on the statement. She had spent most of the night on remarks summarizing the events of the last seven years, although the ship’s records were already under review. It was her chance to set things straight, reassure the crew, and give the right tone to the debriefings. After this group meeting would come a long schedule of individual interviews. She hoped to address the panel's concerns in advance and perhaps shorten a demoralizing process for the crew.

She had been mildly unsettled to discover that while the married crew quarters assigned to her and Chakotay were perfectly functional, in size and furnishings they were more appropriate to enlisted personnel than senior officers. Maybe it was because of their unexpected arrival, or maybe it meant something more. She had no mental energy to devote to what that 'something more' might be. As always, there was only the urgent task at hand - only the immediate threat. She had grown so accustomed to living this way. What would it be like to take a walk with her husband on a perfect autumn day like the one they had mostly missed today, free of life or death menace? It was difficult even to picture such a scene or such a feeling.

Chakotay stayed behind to handle the crush of congratulatory relatives and accept their thanks on behalf of the captain. The day would come soon when she would be free of the burden of their welfare, but it had not yet arrived. 

"You look as worn out as I feel," she said when he appeared a few hours later with a plate of food for her.

He groaned and collapsed onto the narrow sofa. "If they wanted an endurance test, they could have just sent us out on the Academy ropes course."

Janeway pulled a knee to her chest. "No, this is a special kind of test. You ought to go to bed. I'm going to be here a while."

"Normally I'd argue with you, but right now I just want to shut my eyes for a minute." Chakotay promptly fell asleep. She spread a blanket over him and went back to work. Several hours later, she nudged him awake and they stumbled to bed, only to get up a few hours later and stumble back into their uniforms, as they were so accustomed to doing.

"Love you," she said as she blindly sipped the coffee he'd handed her.

"Love you too," he said as he struggled to flatten his hair.

"You know, I like it better when you don't slick it back," she said. 

"Just as soon as I'm not facing a panel of admirals," he said, "I'll do my hair any way you want."

A few junior members of the crew entered the amphitheater-style hall ahead of them, talking and laughing. Their high spirits dissipated quickly when they saw the demeanor of the admirals below them. They filed into seats and sat exchanging tense whispers. After exchanging a few nervous words with Harry and Tuvok, Janeway and Chakotay approached the admirals' table.

"Good morning, Admiral," Janeway said to Nechayev, extending her hand. "It's been a long time."

"Captain Janeway," Nechayev said. She gave a quick shake and retracted her hand. "This will have to be a very formal proceeding. Voyager has a high profile and we are all being scrutinized. I'm sure you understand." 

"Of course," Janeway said. "As I'm sure you understand that my crew has been through a great deal. I hope the debriefings won't add to the challenge of reintegrating them into Starfleet." 

Nechayev's posture was so stiff already that it was nearly impossible for her to stiffen more, but her chin came up. "We will cross that bridge if and when we come to it." 

_"If?"_ Chakotay asked with a growl in his throat. 

Admiral Nechayev ended the conversation by calling the full crew to attention. As one, they obeyed.

“Well,” Nechayev said. The sound system made her voice spring in a disturbing way from the walls around them. “I’m pleased to see that you haven’t abandoned all military discipline.”

Janeway clenched her jaw and gripped her printed statement.

“Permission to address the panel, Admiral Nechayev?” she requested.

Nechayev turned a cold glare on her. “Permission denied. We are concerned that the crew has been coached to provide a certain narrative in debriefings. We will not provide further opportunity for coaching. Senior officers will be separated from each other and the rest of the crew until debriefings are concluded. Crewmembers will remain in this room. There will be no talking and no communication devices. There are copies of the current Starfleet Manual on the PADDs being distributed.” Nechayev gestured to several ensigns entering the room with stacks of PADDs that they began to pass down the rows. Janeway realized with a start that the admirals were not sitting. They did not intend to stay in the auditorium. They were dispersing two by two. This would be no ordinary public debriefing. 

“Between debriefing interviews," Nechayev said, "you will _all_ devote your time to re-familiarizing yourselves – or for some of you, learning for the first time – every line of Starfleet regulation and protocol in preparation for an examination.”

A young female ensign gingerly handed a PADD to Janeway as a line of security officers filed in front of the senior staff and gestured for them to follow, one by one, out of the auditorium. There were glances up and down the row but Janeway held up a hand to warn against any resistance. Unless they chose to challenge the authority of the admiralty to conduct debriefings as they saw fit, there was nothing to be done. 

Tom and B’Elanna were several seats to the right of Janeway, with Miral sound asleep in Tom’s arms. As B’Elanna rose to leave, she turned back to kiss her husband and daughter. Nechayev’s voice erupted on the PA system.

“Fraternization among the crew during debriefing will be punishable by brig time for the duration of debriefings. This is your only warning.”

B’Elanna pulled away from Tom with a deadly look at Nechayev, then a glance at Janeway, who pressed her lips into a thin line but nodded. Tom handed the baby to B'Elanna and lifted the small bag of supplies at his feet to hook the strap over her shoulder. In a moment he too was on his feet and on the way out with a different security officer, fists clenched. When the security officer assigned to Janeway gestured for her to follow, she turned her head and stared at Chakotay as she slowly rose to her feet. It felt like so many moments when they had faced danger and separation, knowing that somehow they would find a way through. Then she faced forward like the officer she was and haughtily marched away.


	13. Welcome to the rest of your life

Chakotay found himself delivered into a room with three chairs arranged two against one on opposite sides of a small table. As soon as he was inside, the security officer stepped out and locked the door behind him. 

“Welcome to the rest of your life,” he muttered and began to pace. He didn’t have to wait long. In perhaps ten or fifteen minutes – there was no clock or tricorder in the room – a pair of older admirals, both men, stepped inside. He knew them vaguely from the Academy – Hansen and Isnala. They had been explorers in an earlier era, which could either mean he’d be able to bond with them over his knowledge of cultures they’d first contacted, or that they would have no understanding of the tensions that created the Maquis and drove him to resign his commission. Or both.

“Commander Chakotay,” Isnala said, reading from a PADD, and shook his hand. It was an automatic gesture, neither warm nor cold. Hansen merely nodded and took one of the pair of chairs. 

“Have a seat, son,” Hansen said. “We have a few questions to ask. This session is being recorded.”

“I understand,” Chakotay answered as he sat. The chair was hard and wobbled.

“Describe the circumstances of your departure from Starfleet,” Isnala said. No preamble. No offer of tea or water or questions about his comfort or condition. If these were aliens, he’d consider them hostile.

“I submitted a statement when I left,” he said, bracing one leg to balance the chair.

Isnala dropped the PADD on the table with a bang. “We have that. We want to hear your own words – and if your perspective on betraying Starfleet has changed.”

“I left to defend my people, not to betray Starfleet.”

“Of course you did,” Hansen said in a soothing tone. “But some people aren’t going to believe that, are they? Wouldn’t it be better if you came clean with a confession, as a first step toward putting all that behind you?”

“A confession?” Chakotay looked from Hansen to Isnala and back again. “Confession of what?”

“Of your attacks on Federation personnel and property.” Isnala pushed a single-spaced document toward him. “There’s room at the end to add your own information, but I think you’ll find it’s fairly comprehensive.”

His heart thumping hard against his ribcage, Chakotay paged through the detailed confession Starfleet had prepared for him - had been preparing for him for some time, given its length. It included raids he hadn’t participated in, civilian deaths he could not have been responsible for, assassinations he hadn’t known about – even a statement that he had knowingly provided assistance and transportation to Changelings in his effort to undermine the Federation, helping to bring about the Dominion War. Then there were acts he'd supposedly committed aboard Voyager, of which fraternization was the least offensive. Some involved Janeway. Nearly all were lies.

“This is ludicrous,” he said and tossed it down. “I’ll never sign this.”

“I understand how you feel,” Hansen said with a sigh. “Of course there are those within the admiralty who believe you are guilty of all these crimes. There are even those who say that the wife of such a man should lose _her_ Starfleet commission.”

Chakotay froze. He glared at Hansen. “You’re threatening Captain Janeway? I know other admirals who would be interested to hear that.”

Hansen shook his head with an air of amusement. “No, no threat. Just an observation. If you don’t cooperate, certain things may be laid at her door, that’s all I’m saying.”

This back and forth continued for hours. There were more accusations, more subtle and less than subtle threats toward Janeway and the rest of the Maquis crewmembers, until at last Hansen and Isnala abruptly left the room. Only then did Chakotay hear his stomach rumble and wonder when was the last time he’d eaten. Some time later, just as he’d begun to wonder if they’d leave him in the windowless interrogation room all night, a new security officer appeared and ordered him to follow.

They did not return to the same residential block where he and Janeway had spent the previous night. Instead they descended into a series of tunnels under the Starfleet campus – nowhere to run, Chakotay thought – and emerged in a low, dormitory-like building that had been used for student housing. Now it featured powerful force fields at the doors and windows. The security officer led Chakotay into a room with a single narrow bed and a few thin towels stacked at the foot. On the small, student-size desk, a simple meal lay on a tray. The utensils were not metal.

“Where is my wife?” Chakotay demanded. “Where is the rest of the crew?”

The security officer shook his head and shut the door. Chakotay went to the door, but the buzz of the force field warned him not to try to touch it. He went to the window, which looked out on a small patch of grass in a courtyard guarded by yet another security officer. When the officer saw him looking out, he tapped a few times at his tricorder and the view went black.

Alone in a room that he now realized was a cell, Chakotay slowly sat on the edge of the bed in the dark. A fear rose in him as great as anything he’d known throughout the years in the Delta quadrant. Separated, he and Kathryn and the crew were tremendously vulnerable to any manipulations Starfleet might employ. 

He clenched his hands together and stroked the warm metal of his new wedding ring. 

“Oh Kathryn,” he said under his breath. “If they tried to use you against me the first day, what are they saying to you?”

TO BE CONTINUED ...


	14. There is one way to put an end to this.

The questions went on for days. The days ran into each other and merged with the nights and the nights were cold. Janeway had forgotten the cutting chill of San Francisco. She shivered in her uniform as her silent security detail escorted her across Starfleet grounds to the quarters she had shared so briefly with Chakotay. He was gone. All they would tell her was that the crew would all have separate quarters until the end of debriefings, “to keep the record clean”. 

She’d like to clean some records herself, preferably with the dangerous end of a phaser rifle.

She’d had little time to become accustomed to having Chakotay with her, really with her, as a full partner. It had been only a few days and nights, yet having him ripped away from her so suddenly felt like a catastrophic loss. She realized too late that he had been her mate all along, a partner in the truest sense since almost the beginning. The intimacy they’d enjoyed the last few days only confirmed that partnership. It did not create it. The love had been there all along. She spoke firmly to herself, but at night she slid between the cold sheets and let tears roll across the bridge of her nose down into her pillow - but only silently, in the dark. She would not give Nechayev the satisfaction of getting surveillance reports about crying.

During the long interrogations - because that was what they were, not benign debriefing by any stretch of the imagination - Nechayev and the admirals who flanked her, Jedediah Daniels and Lorraine Keely, were obsessed with enemy infiltrations during the Dominion War. They pored over Voyager’s logs, looking for signs that Janeway had been compromised or collaborated with the enemy. The presence of the former Maquis – their every action, every dispute – aggravated the admirals excessively.

“Explain to me again,” Keely asked for the third or fourth time one late afternoon, “how you could return Commander Chakotay to his post after he threatened your life?”

Janeway had opened the front of her uniform jacket. The room was warm but she only got more water when she requested a refill. Restroom breaks were supervised to the point of absurdity. She had to leave the stall door open. She couldn’t be sure that they were trying to make her uncomfortable, but certainly no one was taking any pains to make the ordeal any easier.

“If I explain again,” she answered, “will you let me see my husband?”

“As I’ve said ...” Nechayev began.

“Yes yes, I know.” Janeway rolled her eyes. “You realize we had seven years to cook up a story if that’s what we wanted to do.”

“Yes,” Nechayev answered without any sympathy, “but you had little time to prepare yourselves for the jump to the Alpha quadrant after Admiral Janeway showed up. We would be negligent in our duty if we allowed you to confer and decide what version of events you wish to give Starfleet.”

“This is inhumane!” Janeway slapped the table and jumped up. She began to pace. “You’ve kept me isolated – except for non-stop interrogations – for more than three days. If you’re going to charge me with crimes, go ahead and do it, but I’m not answering another question until you let me see my crew.”

“As I've explained, they are no longer your crew, and we’ve barely made it through the first year of logs, Captain,” Nechayev said. “We have a duty to perform. This process will take precisely as long as it takes. You can be returned to your quarters or to the brig each night, but refusing to cooperate will only prolong your isolation.”

Janeway swung around angrily to lean over the back of her chair. “Let me see Admiral Paris.”

“Admiral Paris is involved in the process, but he was not assigned to your debriefing. You will see him at the conclusion. He is aware of your status.”

“This is unacceptable! Let me see my crew,” Janeway said, hands on hips, glaring down, then bit her lip and tried a different tack. "Or at least some of them. My husband, for example."

Finally Nechayev relaxed her stiff shoulders slightly and leaned across the table. “Since you mention Commander Chakotay, there is one way to put an end to this.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Nechayev clicked a few times on a PADD and slid it across the table. Janeway picked it up and read. Her jaw clenched and her face reddened as she absorbed its meaning. She tossed the PADD back so hard that it skidded to a stop against Nechayev’s arm.

“How dare you?” 

Nechayev shrugged. “It would resolve most of our concerns. You could walk out of here today with your place in the admiralty all but guaranteed.”

“If you think I would abandon any member of my crew - let alone my husband - for an admiral’s bars, you don’t know me at all, no matter how much you’ve studied my logs.”

Now Nechayev rose to face Janeway, who was shorter by several inches but did not back down or lessen her glare. Nechayev looked to Daniels and Keely. “Would you give us the room?” she asked, in a tone that was more like an order.

To Janeway, Daniels and Keely looked grateful as they got up and left. They found this distasteful. That was good. It meant that Nechayev was acting on her own, without the collective support of the admiralty. When they were alone, Nechayev turned slowly back to Janeway with a look Janeway recognized. This was the admiral laying down her bottom line.

“I’m a woman too, Kathryn,” she said. “I understand how it’s possible to get carried away by the moment. And you would not be the first captain to make a rash decision in a moment of extreme stress. Can you really say that you want to be tied to this criminal and all the consequences he’ll face?”

“Chakotay?” Janeway’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

“Sign the annulment papers,” Nechayev said, “and I’ll see to it that the Maquis - _all_ the Maquis - walk free.”

TO BE CONTINUED ...


	15. We both got hurt.

Seven wore a tailored gray pantsuit over a blue silk blouse that matched her eyes. She stood in front of the door not exactly at attention but in the same stiff-backed stance she had used most of her life for regeneration. She had spent the night in a windowless room that gave every sign of being a retro-fitted storage closet, shelves still bolted to the far wall. Her regeneration alcove stood in the corner like a piece of abandoned equipment left plugged in. The walls were white. The doors were locked. She had been frightened at first, but she began the regeneration cycle. 

When security officers came for her the first morning, she was refreshed and eager to tell her story. They led her to an office with windows over the green campus and two unfamiliar officers began to ask questions. She answered as directly as she could with the narrative of her years aboard Voyager. By the fourth day, she reached the most recent months and concluded with the bumpy end of her relationship with Commander Chakotay. This story elicited more interest than she expected. There were new questions, personal in nature. She answered as accurately as she could, pleased to be heard.

The next morning when her regeneration cycle ended, a new admiral was in the storage closet with her, watching her.

“Can I help you?” Seven asked, uncomfortable at being caught in such a vulnerable position by a stranger.

“I am Admiral Alynna Nechayev,” the woman said. “I’d like to talk.”

“What about?”

“You had a recent intimate relationship with Commander Chakotay, cut short by his abrupt decision to marry Captain Janeway.”

“Correct.”

“Do you still have feelings for the commander?” Nechayev asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I – yes,” Seven said. “I was not prepared for their sudden marriage. It was … painful.”

Nechayev handed over a PADD. “Then you will be pleased to know that it’s over. Captain Janeway has requested an annulment on grounds that the marriage was intended to defraud Starfleet for the purpose of obtaining better treatment for the Maquis crew members.”

Seven read the words. It was one short paragraph in which Janeway stated that the marriage was based on intent to defraud and had never been legal. It was signed with her thumbprint and signature.

“What does this have to do with me?” she asked.

“We haven’t informed Commander Chakotay. We don’t know to what extent he was party to the fraud, but we think he will be more forthcoming with you than anyone else. I want you to take this to him and report back to me on his response.”

“He hasn’t spoken to the captain?”

Nechayev had already turned to go. “No. They were separated for the duration of debriefing, for security reasons. Follow me.”

In this way Seven found herself in new clothes, provided by Nechayev, with her hair down, standing at Chakotay’s door before 0800. She knocked and then he was there, in full uniform, in front of her.

“Seven!” His face showed relief. He reached a tentative hand across the threshold. “I see they took down the force field.”

“May I come in?”

“Of course. Although it’s not much.”

She had to turn sideways to slide by him in the narrow passage between the wall and the closet. They brushed against each other and she felt the same physical response she had experienced in his quarters when they’d had their first and second kiss. From his dilated pupils and accelerated respiration, she knew he’d felt the same response. Nechayev's suggestion that Seven would be able to "comfort" Chakotay had confused her at first, but now she began to understand. The news that Janeway had used him would be hurtful. She, Seven, would be there to take him in her arms. She was grateful for Nechayev's sensitivity.

They walked to the window, the best source of light, now unblocked and showing the same view of the courtyard and the guard. Seven stood close to Chakotay and enjoyed the influence she was having on his vital signs.

“They asked me to bring you some difficult news,” she said, tilting her head. “They thought it would be easier coming from a … friend.” She handed him the PADD.

Chakotay read the document, blinked hard, and read it again. His eyebrows twitched as he looked up at Seven with wide eyes.

“What is this? Is this real? Have you seen Kathryn?”

This was the hard part. Admiral Nechayev had encouraged Seven to make Chakotay understand that this was what Janeway wanted, in whatever way seemed best – not to lie, necessarily, but to smooth his path toward acceptance. It was confusing. Seven was inexperienced in humans’ roundabout ways of communicating.

“She decided to tell Starfleet the truth,” Seven said. It was a hedge. These were Nechayev’s words, not Janeway’s, but it was reasonable. It was a better explanation of the marriage than what Seven had heard so far. “She married you to protect the Maquis. Now that she knows you’ll be safe from prosecution, she does not wish to perpetrate a fraud upon Starfleet. Or on you.”

“On me? You’re saying – this can’t be true. I have to see Kathryn.” He rushed to the door but the force field was already back in place. He swore and turned back to Seven. She went to him and put her arms around him.

“She was trying to protect you, and the crew. That’s why she wanted to get married right away. She used the marriage as leverage in negotiations with Starfleet. It is … awkward for her to explain to you. That’s why they sent me.”

Chakotay stared into Seven’s perfect face, his expression pained as he grappled for comprehension. “It’s so like her,” he said at last. “Anything to protect the crew. And I was only too happy to believe all of it.”

“I’m sorry, Chakotay,” Seven said softly. She raised a hand to his cheek. “We both got hurt. But I’m here with you. I still love you.” She pressed against him and brushed her lips to his. 

TO BE CONTINUED ...


	16. He wanted to scream.

Chakotay’s mind reeled. He was playing back the jumbled images and intense emotions he’d experienced since offering Kathryn the ring just over a week ago, trying to make sense of this new and painfully contradictory information, and at the same time Seven was sticking her tongue in his mouth. For a moment he let her, because his mind was entirely elsewhere and hardly registered the physical sensation. 

Then, as if waking up, he felt her breasts against his chest and his own body responding on autopilot – not at all what he intended. He took her firmly by the shoulders and stepped back.

“No, Seven,” he said. “Even if it were a good idea for us to get back together – and I have serious doubts about that – I can’t do it until I’ve talked to Kathryn. I don’t care what this says. Until she tells me herself that our marriage isn’t real, she’s my wife.”

Seven lowered her eyes. “Of course. I apologize. This has been a … difficult time for me.”

Chakotay sighed. “I know. I’m sorry for my part in that.” He took his hands off her, crossed his arms across his chest and stepped another pace away from Seven. This was, in essence, exactly where he’d been emotionally when he’d gotten involved with Seven aboard Voyager – rejected by Kathryn and desperate for a genuine human connection. 

But he’d learned his lesson. Admiral Janeway hadn’t died for nothing. Even if Kathryn didn’t want to be married to him, they were back on Earth. If he had to, he had the time and resources to get over her for real rather than messing up someone else’s life on the rebound.

Seven looked embarrassed and was turning away when the door opened – fast, like the security officer was expecting to catch them at something – and the day returned to its normal schedule of endless questions and boring answers. He asked to see Kathryn but again the answer was no. He asked about the crew and was told they were all busy with debriefing. He would see them in a few days. There was nothing to worry about. The repetitive answers enraged him. He would need hours of meditation that evening.

The security detail took a different route back to his Spartan quarters after the day’s interrogation. Night was falling as they walked a dim hallway with windows onto a well-lit quadrangle surrounded by Starfleet buildings. From the corner behind and to Chakotay’s right, a group of officers began to cross the green space, voices muted by the glass but lively, chatting, laughing. 

It had been so many days since he’d had anything to laugh about that he paused to watch. The security officers, usually in such a hurry, paused beside him to watch the bright creatures in new dress uniforms – a design unfamiliar to Chakotay. He had just begun to turn away when at the back of the group he saw Janeway, dressed like the others, gesticulating in the enthusiastic way she had when she’d gotten started on a scientific topic, her bright hair glossy and unmistakable. The tall, handsome officer beside her listened with rapt attention as he guided her down the path, one hand in the small of her back exactly as Chakotay had become so accustomed to walking the last seven years. Something painful clenched in his gut as he watched.

It was nothing. She was doing her duty, trying to loosen up the admiralty to get the whole crew out faster. But still, it stung that he wasn’t the one escorting her. He glanced down at his old uniform, a little faded and frayed after so many wearings. They would take it away from him soon, he supposed. The debriefings seemed headed in that direction, with the drip-drip of accusations, trying to trip him up on details. Kathryn was probably trying to keep the Maquis out of prison. He should feel grateful.

What he felt, though, as they headed down a set of unpainted interior cement steps and took the utility corridor with its low ceiling and ducts overhead, was abandoned. When the officers let him into his quarters, he stepped across the threshold with a sense of dark resignation to whatever was about to happen, even as the force field sprang up behind him.

There, on the far side of the small desk, sat Seven. There was a tablecloth on the desk now, and a meal for two laid out. She wore a red dress and her hair was down. His eyes needed a moment to focus because two candles on the desk gave the only light. 

“What is this?” he asked.

She smiled. “My debriefing is complete. I know yours isn’t, but I wanted to celebrate. I thought it might cheer you up. Look – your favorite.” She took the lid off a tureen. “Mushroom soup.”

“Thank you, Seven. Have you seen any of the rest of the crew? Has anyone been allowed to go home?”

She began to serve the soup. “Because I spent less time aboard Voyager, there was less to review. To my knowledge, the others are still occupied.”

Chakotay pulled out his chair and sat on the edge of it. “And the captain? Have you seen her?”

Seven froze for a second, then responded simply, “No.”

He took a bite of soup, but he couldn’t taste it. He couldn’t sit still. Seven put a comforting hand over his but before he could respond, someone knocked on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Admiral Nechayev pushed inside.

“I need to speak to you alone, Chakotay,” she said. 

He was on his feet and facing her without remembering the movement that got him there. “Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of my crewmate.”

“Very well.” Nechayev gestured to the security detail to wait in the corridor. As soon as they were gone, she put a PADD in Chakotay’s hand. “I’m offering you a chance to avoid the prosecution of your Maquis crew. The admiralty considers you the ringleader of your cell. If you will agree to a period of voluntary exile on Dorvan V, to begin immediately, we will pardon the rest of your crew.”

Chakotay read the brief document and lifted his eyes to Nechayev. “Ten years?” he asked in disbelief. “Without so much as a trial?”

“It’s your home planet. We consider it a lenient plea agreement that will put an end to what could be a very long process. B’Elanna Torres, for example, could go home to her husband and child.”

He’d been waiting for them to use B’Elanna against him. It was only surprising that they’d waited this long – and shocking that they were keeping her from Tom and Miral. She must be livid. How many days had it been? He’d lost count. “And my wife? When do I see her?” In his peripheral vision, Seven shifted into Nechayev’s line of sight.

Nechayev cleared her throat. “I thought you’d been made aware of the annulment.”

Chakotay took a step toward her and Nechayev clenched her jaw. “I need to see Kathryn Janeway before I agree to anything,” he said. “That’s non-negotiable.”

“You’re not in a position to be negotiating anything,” Nechayev snapped. “You go quietly and you go tonight, or the deal’s off the table. We’re ready to start prosecuting Maquis tomorrow. You could wind up in prison with all your friends for a lot longer than ten years.”

When he thought back to this moment, he would think of other arguments he could have used, tactics that a tactician like himself should have thought of in extremis. But as Nechayev stared him down, all he could think of was Janeway walking across the quad with that handsome officer and how it hadn’t been to save him after all. Maybe this was the deal she’d cut, because she knew he’d rather fall on the sword for his crew.

Seven was at his elbow, murmuring that she'd come with him to Dorvan V, and Nechayev was tapping her heel impatiently. He wanted to scream or cry or hit something, but he only slumped back into his chair. Someone was holding the PADD in front of him, pointing at the rectangle where he should place his thumbprint. As if his hand wasn’t attached to his body, it hovered over the screen, then he watched his thumb drop and make his mark. It was done.


	17. Dresses are ... inefficient.

Seven didn’t want to call her landlady Mama Bala. She was uncomfortable with the familiarity the term implied, but she couldn’t extract any other name for the woman from anyone in the village. Mama Bala could have been any age between 80 and 150. She wore a scarf tied around her head and a shapeless black dress over a hunched body. 

Chakotay only shrugged. “I’ve never heard her called anything else,” he said. “You might as well get used to it.”

Mama Bala gave Seven the snug room her own daughter had vacated to attend university in another sector. Seven tried to be there for nothing other than sleeping. There was plenty to occupy her at Chakotay’s house. She was automating the functions of his garden and replicating the technology for use throughout the settlement to improve productivity. He allowed her to run any experiment she liked. It was, she acknowledged to Mama Bala, an effective partnership.

“You like him,” Mama Bala twinkled one morning as Seven was hurrying to gather her things and get up the road. “Does he like you? He must.”

“We shall see,” Seven told her stiffly. They had been on the planet more than three weeks, with the long voyage before that. Chakotay was turned in on himself, unresponsive most of the time. He worked every daylight hour and wandered at night. He was helpful to his neighbors – Mama Bala’s crumbling roof got a full makeover – but never socialized. Seven had no idea how to diagnose him, but he was a dark, morose version of the man she had known aboard Voyager.

“You wear this dress, he’ll like you better,” Mama Bala suggested, one finger in the air. She went to a narrow wardrobe in the hall that led to her own bedroom and pulled out a low-cut blue dress. Seven accepted the hanger with her left hand but eyed the garment suspiciously.

“Dresses are … inefficient,” she said.

“Try it. One day. Tell me what you think. And put your hair down.” Mama Bala reached for one of the pins holding Seven’s hair tight. “Men like a little softness. Cheer him up.”

Chakotay was on his knees repairing a water pump when Seven arrived. He didn’t look up when she greeted him. She knelt on the far side of the pump.

“I worked on this pump yesterday,” she said. “It needs a new compressor. I ordered the part.”

Chakotay cast aside his wrench with a grunt of frustration. “I thought I could - ” he began, then caught sight of Seven, hair on her shoulders, leaning slightly forward, lips parted, with her bosom displayed. His mouth fell open.

After a long pause he finally asked, “Going somewhere?”

“I thought you might walk me into the village. It’s market day.”

She expected one of his usual excuses but none came. Instead he rose and offered her his arm. That evening, Mama Bala was delighted at the story.

“I have more dresses,” she said. “You’ll bring him back to life.”

Seven contrived more outings with Chakotay. At Mama Bala’s instruction, she also prepared more elaborate meals and table settings.

“What’s all this?” was the most Chakotay would say about her efforts, but he was more talkative, as if acknowledging her attempt to make their new circumstances brighter. He saw her to the door at the end of one such evening.

“Thank you,” he said. “I know I haven’t been much fun to be around. Thanks for making things a little … nicer.”

Seven leaned in and brushed Chakotay’s cheek with a kiss that grazed the edge of his lips. He seemed about to say something, but instead went in and shut the door. 

The next night, Seven wore the blue dress that – she was convinced – had first persuaded him to walk to the market with her. He would kiss her tonight. They were so close. She readied the table, went out front to complete a few last adjustments of the solar deflector, and returned to set out food for their meal on the back patio. 

Chakotay was showering after a day helping another neighbor build a house. He came out smelling fresh and looking more handsome than she’d ever seen him, fit from manual labor and browned by the suns.

“You look … very healthy,” she said with a smile she intended to be seductive. Mama Bala had been teaching her how to speak to a man, how to show her interest. Chakotay wasn’t very responsive, but he was very aware of her. She could sense it.

“As do you,” he answered. “Another wonderful meal. Thank you, Seven.”

When they had finished eating and discussing the next day’s projects she said, “I was wondering if you could massage my neck. It’s very sore from lifting deflector panels this morning.”

“Of course.” Chakotay circled to stand behind her, gathered her hair and rested it on one of her shoulders. His warm hands began to move down her neck, then froze as he startled her with a sudden cry.

“Kathryn!” he said.

Seven’s head jerked up from the relaxed posture it was just settling into. She stared at the unexplainable, impossible appearance of Kathryn Janeway, out of uniform, on the grass at the edge of the house just beyond the patio. Janeway looked stunned, unable to respond. Her hair was pulled back, not coiffed the way Seven was used to seeing it, and she had lost weight. Her stance, braced against the wall of the house, was tense and weary.

Chakotay pulled his hands from Seven’s neck and took an off-balance step toward Janeway, then another, faster, and a second later reached her and crushed her against his chest. A great sob welled up in him and broke like a wave around her as his tears began to soak her hair. Janeway’s arms rose around him and she shut her eyes tight against tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. Her softer, shuddering sobs rose and fell in time with his.

Seven backed away several steps into the dark shadows of the arbor, where she could see but not easily be seen.

Janeway and Chakotay stood together, weeping and then growing quiet in the comfort of each other’s arms, for several minutes. Janeway finally pulled back a few inches to sniffle and look up at him. Seven saw blank wonder on his face. 

“You came,” he said. “I told myself you would, but I guess part of me didn’t believe it.”

Janeway gave him a half-smile and brushed away the moisture on her face. “In seven years, when have I not come for you, or you for me?”

He cradled her jaw in his hand and let his fingers rest in her hair. “They told me you had our marriage annulled.”

She shook her head. “They wanted me to sign the papers – Nechayev and the others. I told them never.”

He kissed her then, as hard as he’d hugged her, so that when they parted they were both panting. Seven retreated another step into the darkness. This was what she had missed. She had looked at them every day for three years and never seen how they completed each other. Chakotay’s misery here on the planet wasn’t something that could be cured out of the presence of Janeway. Why hadn’t wise old Mama Bala seen it? Seven knew that answer too: because Seven hadn’t told her the whole story.

He blinked a few times and seemed to make an effort to master himself. “You must be tired and hungry from the journey. There’s still food left on the table.” He looked around. “Seven was here. It was sweet of her to leave us alone.”

Janeway gazed into the thickening night and seemed to hesitate for a second when she looked in Seven’s direction, but made no motion toward her. “I ate before I beamed down,” she said. “Tomorrow we can tell each other everything that happened, but tonight I just want to lie down with my husband.”

Chakotay kissed her neck, put an arm around her waist and led her inside. Silently, Seven retreated around the far corner of the house and back to Mama Bala’s, where she packed her bag.

“Where are you going?” Mama Bala demanded. “You can’t leave, just when Chakotay is growing so fond of you.”

“His wife arrived tonight,” Seven said. “He won’t need my help anymore.”

“His wife!” Mama Bala sat back in her rocker, stunned. “He never said anything about a wife!”

“We thought she was lost,” Seven explained. “Or to be precise, I tried to make him believe that she was lost. She is not. Now it’s time for me to go.”

Seven changed back into her own brown suit, returned the dresses to the wardrobe, and kissed Mama Bala on the cheek. 

“I’ll miss you, child,” Mama Bala said.

“And I you, Mama Bala,” Seven answered. She was pleased to discover that she meant it, and that the endearment now flowed easily off her tongue. It was another step toward becoming human – as was leaving Chakotay and Janeway behind. She shouldered her bag and began to walk toward the transport station.

END


End file.
